Court Opinion

ID: 9720697
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:39:35.706093+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:20.714998
License: Public Domain

Robert W. Hansen, J.
(concurring). Obscenity or hard core pornography is not protected by the United States Constitution.1 However, the meaning of obscenity must be constitutionally defined and the fact of obscenity properly established.

*714
Constitutionally defined.

Two definitions of the word “obscenity” have been approved by the United States Supreme Court as meeting constitutional criteria.
“Hard Core Pornography.” One definition, held to be constitutionally antiseptic,2 defines obscenity as “hard core pornography,” in turn defined as that which “. . . focuses predominantly upon what is sexually morbid, grossly perverse and bizarre, without any artistic or scientific purpose or justification. ...” 3 The writer would prefer to accept and adopt this “hard core pornography” definition as most clearly indicating what may be *715considered obscene agreeing that “. . . it does describe something that most judges and others will ‘know . . . when [they] see it’ . . . and that leaves the smallest room for disagreement. ...” 4
“The Roth Test.” A second definition of obscenity, held to be constitutionally valid, derives from the Roth Case,5 capsulized in only the plurality opinion in Memoirs as requiring: “ (a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex; (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters; and (c) the material' is utterly without redeeming social value.” 6 Where these three elements coalesce, under the Roth definition of obscenity, you have the distinct and identifiable obscenity which a state may constitutionally suppress, whether by civil or criminal sanction. It is this three-pronged definition which the majority opinion adopts for Wisconsin.

Redeeming social value.

The “hard core pornography” definition requires that the constitutionally obscene be “without any artistic or scientific purpose or justification.” The Roth definition requires that the constitutionally unprotected be “utterly without redeeming social value.” The intent and purpose of these two qualifying requirements are identical, but the interpretations given them have placed them poles apart.
The semantic trap into which the Roth definition has led was set by porno-critics and porno-defenders alike in *716underlining the word “utterly.” All that the supreme court majority had said in Roth was: “[I]mplicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance. ...”7 Commentators and less-than-majority United States Supreme Court opinions moved this entirely correct observation into a suggested requirement that obscene materials, under Roth, be “utterly without redeeming social value.” Such near reversal of meaning is bad enough, but greater harm has come from underlining and stressing the word “utterly” in the plurality added requirement to a court majority approved observation.
The word “utterly” adds utterly nothing to the phrase, “without redeeming social value.” To be without something is by definition to be completely without it. To be without money or a home is to be completely lacking in coin of the realm or roof over one’s head. In colloquial usage, “to do without” means to get along entirely without. Redundancy adds neither emphasis nor dimension. Overstressing the word that adds nothing has led to overlooking the key word, “redeeming,” in the added-to-Roth requirement that the obscene be “without redeeming social value.” (Emphasis supplied.)
“Redeeming” means sufficient to redeem or rescue. To redeem is to “. . . make amends for, to offset; to atone for; as, to redeem an error.” 8 In theology, it means to rescue from sin and its consequences.9 Inherent in the definition is to “. . . make amends for; compensate for; make up for; as, the play was redeemed by the acting.” 10 ° Something more than a whiff or a whisper of “social value” is required to make it a “redeeming social value.” *717An orange floating in an open sewer does not change it into a fruit salad. A larded-in quotation from Plato or Aristotle is not enough to redeem what is otherwise completely obscene. A trailer with a few words on sex education, recited by an actor posing as a Danish doctor, does not redeem two hours of filmed filth and degradation. To be redemptive under the third of the expanded Roth requirements, the social value must be sufficient to rescue or reclaim.

Properly established.

Whether the constitutionally valid definition of obscenity is, as the writer would make it, that of “hard core pornography,” or, as the majority of this court elects, the Roth definition, the definition does no more than set the standard or prescribe the test for determining whether a particular article, photograph or publication is obscene. The writer concurs completely with the majority holding that this is an initial fact determination to be made by the jury or trier of fact. The writer joins the majority in seeing merit to the Chief Justice Warren-Justice Clark statement that . . once a finding of obscenity has been made below under a proper application of the Roth test, . . .” the scope of review 11 should be “. . . a ‘sufficient evidence’ standard of review — requiring something more than merely any evidence but something less than ‘substantial evidence on the record [including the allegedly obscene material] as a whole.’ ” 12 While we have moved a long way from the ancient common-law concept of a jury’s exercise of near-limitless discretion in finding facts and establishing damages, we have not travelled far enough to negate the fact-finding function of *718the jury or trier of fact. If a jury is trusted to determine the fact of intent in a first-degree murder case, it ought to be trusted to determine the fact of obscenity under proper instructions and subject to properly limited trial court and appellate court review.
While the writer has a preference for the “hard core pornography” definition of obscenity, rather than the three-pronged Roth definition, the writer concurs with the majority that a constitutionally valid definition of obscenity was given to the jury and that the fact of obscenity was properly determined by the jury applying a constitutionally proper test or standard. The writer concurs completely in affirmance.

 Ginsberg v. United States (1968), 390 U. S. 629, 635, 88 Sup. Ct. 1274, 20 L. Ed. 2d 195, stating: “Obscenity is not -within the area of protected speech or press.” Quoting with approval from Roth v. United States (1957), 354 U. S. 476, 485, 77 Sup. Ct. 1304, 1 L. Ed. 2d 1498: “We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press.”

 Mishkin v. New York (1966), 383 U. S. 502, 503, 86 Sup. Ct. 958, 16 L. Ed. 2d 56, upholding the constitutionality of a New York state anti-obscenity statute, sec. 1141 of the New York Penal Law, making guilty of a misdemeanor:
“ ‘1. A person who . . . has in his possession with intent to sell, lend, distribute . . . any obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent, sadistic, masochistic or disgusting book ... or who . . . prints, utters, publishes, or in any manner manufactures, or prepares any such book ... or who
“ ‘2. In any manner hires, employs, uses or permits any person to do or assist in doing any act or thing mentioned in this section, or any of them.’ ”

 “‘. . . It [obscene material covered by sec. 1141] focuses predominantly upon what is sexually morbid, grossly perverse and bizarre, without any artistic or scientific purpose or justification. Recognizable “by the insult it offers, invariably, to sex, and to the human spirit” (D. H. Lawrence Pornography and Obscenity [1930], p. 12) it is to be differentiated from the bawdy and the ribald. Depicting dirt for dirt’s sake, the obscene is the vile, rather than the coarse, the blow to sense, not merely to sensibility. It smacks, at times, of fantasy and unreality, of sexual perversion and sickness and represents according to one thoughtful scholar “a debauchery of the sexual facility.” (Murray, Literature and Censorship, 14 Books on Trial, 393, 394; see, also, Lockhart and McClure, Censorship of Obscenity: The Developing Constitutional Standards, 45 Minn. L. Rev. 5, 65)’” People v. Richmond County News, Inc. (1961), 9 N. Y. 2d 578, 586-587, 175 N. E. 2d 681. Cited in Mishkin v. New York, supra, fn. 4, at pages 506, 507.

 Mr. Justice Harlan, dissenting opinion, Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966), 383 U. S. 413, 457, 86 Sup. Ct. 975, 16 L. Ed. 2d 1.

 Roth v. United States (1957), 354 U. S. 476, 77 Sup. Ct. 1304, 1 L. Ed. 2d 1498.

 Memoirs v. Massachusetts, supra, at page 418. See also: Ginsberg v. United States, supra, at page 635 referring to “. . . the formulation for determining obscenity under Roth stated in the plurality opinion in Memoirs v. Massachusetts. . . .”

 Roth v. United States, supra, at page 484.

 Webster’s Elementary Dictionary, A Merriam-Webster Book, published by American Book Company (1941), at page 511.

 Funk & Wagnall’s College Standard Dictionary of the English Language, published by Funk & Wagnall’s Company, at page 953.

 Id. at page 953.

 The situation and scope of review, of course, is identical if the “hard core pornography” definition is adopted as the standard or test.

 Mr. Chief Justice WARREN-Mr. Justice Clark, dissenting, in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), 378 U. S. 184, 203, 84 Sup. Ct. 1676, 12 L. Ed. 2d 793.