Court Opinion

ID: 9472792
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:11:05.946475+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:09.118988
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the majority’s decision affirming appellant’s conviction on counts 8, 10, 11 and 12 of the indictment. However, I would affirm the remaining seven counts of the indictment as well.
On count 1 (conspiracy to violate §§ 2251 and 1461), I agree that § 2251 is inapplicable to photoprocessors, and thus that the § 2251 leg of the conspiracy count must be thrown out. However, as the jury convicted Petrov on ten underlying § 1461 offenses, four of which we now affirm, I conclude the jury would certainly have convicted Petrov of conspiracy if count 1 had been addressed to the underlying § 1461 offenses alone. That normally would be sufficient ground to affirm the conspiracy conviction. See United States v. Anzalone, 626 F.2d 239, 291 (2d Cir.1980); United States v. Mack, 112 F.2d 290, 291 (2d Cir.1940) (where conspiracy to commit mul*837tiple offenses is charged, proof of only one offense sufficient to sustain conspiracy conviction).
Notwithstanding that general rule protecting the valid leg of a conspiracy conviction, the majority finds that the inclusion of the improper § 2251 charge here so prejudiced the jury as to the valid § 1461 charge as to require reversal of the entire conspiracy count. I disagree. Although the government’s introduction of the pictures supporting the § 2251 portion of count 1 undoubtedly did not dispose the jury kindly toward Petrov, five of the eleven underlying § 1461 counts also involved allegedly obscene pictures of children. Thus, the government would have been free to argue that one purpose of the conspiracy was to mail “child pornography” or “obscene pictures involving kids” even if § 1461 had been the sole substantive offense charged as to count 1. Under the circumstances, I fail to see how combining the § 2251 charge with the § 1461 charge significantly increased the likelihood of conviction on count 1.
I have similar reservations about the “spillover” argument as applied to counts 2, 3, 5 & 6. As all four counts were based on photographs of children, the government again would have been free to argue to the jury that appellant was guilty of mailing “child pornography” or “obscene photographs involving kids,” whether or not it had charged § 2251 in count 1.
As a result, the only possible “spillover” argument I see as to the § 1461 portion of count 1 and counts 2, 3, 5 or 6 concerns not whether the photographs supporting these counts involve child pornography, but whether they are pornographic at all. That is, if the photographs were in fact, as the majority contends, “relatively innocuous” viewed on their own, appellant might have a valid argument that the jury would not have found them to be obscene but for the spillover effect from the clearly obscene photographs, of children introduced to support the § 2251 portion of count 1. Having looked at-the photographs in question, I conclude that is not the ease here. Although the photographs submitted on counts 2, 3, 5, and 6 taken as a whole may be marginally less explicit than those introduced in support of the § 2251 portion of count 1, they were far from “relatively innocuous.” Almost all of them depicted children with genitals exposed, standing or lying in sexually suggestive poses. Many are close-up shots of boys’ genitals, in several cases with the boys shown fondling themselves, in others, fondling one another. However we might judge the photographs de novo, I conclude the jury reasonably could have found them, taken alone, to be pornographic. I would therefore affirm appellant’s conviction on counts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6.
As to counts 7 and 9, Judge Newman and I agree that under United States v. Klaw, 350 F.2d 155 (2d Cir.1964), expert testimony is not required to establish the prurient appeal of photographs depicting bestiality. On its facts, Klaw applies only to depictions of sadomasochistic activity. The Supreme Court, in endorsing Klaw in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 56 n. 6, 93 S.Ct. 2628, 2634 n. 6, 37 L.Ed.2d 446 (1973), left open the question of what other sexual conduct was so bizarre as to require expert testimony as well. The only court thus far to consider whether the rule in Klaw should be extended to depictions of bestiality has held that it should not be. See United States v. Thomas, 613 F.2d 787, 794 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 888, 101 S.Ct. 245, 66 L.Ed.2d 114 (1980) (material included, inter alia, depictions of “sexual activities between people and animals,” id. at 791). That conclusion accords with common sense. The photographs submitted on counts 7 and 9, which I take to be typical of the bestiality genre, depict people in various poses engaged in genital intercourse and oral sex with animals. Unlike the depictions of torture and deformation at issue in Klaw, most people would recognize the conduct depicted here as inherently sexual. A jury is therefore competent to evaluate its prurient appeal. Cf. United States v. Thoma, 726 F.2d 1191 (7th Cir.1984) (same with regard to pedophilia); United States v. Wild, 422 F.2d 34 (2d *838Cir.1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 986, 91 S.Ct. 1644, 29 L.Ed.2d 152 (1971) (same with regard to homosexuality). Under the circumstances, it seems a pointless exercise to require an expert to testify to what would be self-evident to the average juror. We would thus hold that the jury was competent to determine for itself, without aid of expert testimony, the prurient appeal of the photographs in question here, and affirm appellant’s conviction on counts 7 and 9 as well.