Court Opinion

ID: 9583602
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:40:26.644011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:17.367745
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, Presiding Judge,
concurring in part/dissenting in part.
While I agree with the opinion concerning the principles of Double Jeopardy, I must *845dissent to the majority’s application of equal protection analysis.
A classification against a class member must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation. All persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike. Stanton v. Stanton, 421 U.S. 7, 14, 95 S.Ct. 1373, 1377, 43 L.Ed.2d 688, 694 (1975). Equal protection emphasizes a difference in treatment between classes of individuals whose situations are the same. Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U.S. 387, 406, 105 S.Ct. 830, 841, 83 L.Ed.2d 821, 836 (1985).
It is obvious to me that the members of the class within 21 O.S.1981, § 1040.53, will never be heard to complain because they are criminally exempt under the statute. Thus, only one outside the class, but similarly circumstanced, will ever be heard to cry “foul” at the different treatment. We have that very scenario before us at this time.
Title 21 O.S.1981, § 1040.53 criminally exempts a projectionist, assistant projectionist, usher or cashier in a commercial theatre open to the general public which exhibits obscene motion pictures, provided that the party is not acting as manager and has no financial interest in the theatre. However, 21 O.S.Supp.1986, § 1021(A) provides criminal penalty for every person who willfully “sells, distributes, keeps for sale, or exhibits any obscene or indecent writing, paper, book, picture, photograph, motion picture, figure, or form of any description....”
I am of the opinion that an employee of a commercial theatre exhibiting obscene motion pictures, who has no financial interest and is not acting as manager, and an employee of a commercial adult bookstore displaying obscene magazines, again having no financial interest in the store and not acting as manager, are similarly circumstanced. I find no substantive distinction between a cashier of a commercial adult theatre and a cashier of a commercial adult bookstore. Yet, one can be criminally prosecuted, while the other is criminally exempt.
Thus, I would hold 21 O.S.Supp.1984, § 1021(A)(3) unconstitutional as it denies equal protection to individuals whose situations are arguably indistinguishable. I would further REVERSE this ease with instructions to DISMISS.