Court Opinion

ID: 9654432
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:20:12.44833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:09.148727
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge
(dissenting).
In my opinion, the Missouri obscenity statute, Sec. 563.280 RSMo 1969, V.A.M.S., is unconstitutional.
In Miller v. California, —U.S. —, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973), the Supreme Court held that First Amendment values are adequately protected if the state law that regulates obscene material is limited, as written or construed, to the following considerations: (a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value (p.-, 93 S.Ct. 2607).
The Missouri statute, as written and authoritatively construed, fails to define specifically the sexual conduct which must be depicted or described in the material to subject it to regulation under the statute, as required by Miller. The court in Miller gives two examples of the types of material a state statute may permissibly define and regulate (p.-, 93 S.Ct. p. 2615):
“(a) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated.
“(b) Patently offensive representation or descriptions of masturbation, execretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals.”
These descriptions of conduct are a far cry from the loose language of Sec. 563.-280, supra, which regulates “lewd, licentious, indecent or lascivious” matter of an “indecent, immoral or scandalous character.”
We have held that this statute is not unconstitutionally vague. State v. Becker, 364 Mo. 1079, 272 S.W.2d 283 (Mo.1954). However, the language of Miller requires this court to take a second look at the constitutionality of this statute.
I also dissent for the reason stated in my dissent in City of Kansas City v. O’Connor et al., Nos. 57266, 57132 and 58133, also decided this date, that the state of Missouri has no legitimate interest under the freedom of speech clause of our own constitution, Art. I, Sec. 8, in censoring the films and publications available to consenting adults.
For these reasons I respectfully dissent.