Court Opinion

ID: 9720696
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:39:35.702056+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:20.712251
License: Public Domain

Wilkie, J".
(concurring). The determination of whether a particular publication is obscene is a mixed question of fact and constitutional law on which an appellate court is obliged to make an independent determination. We cannot escape this responsibility here. In this state, this principle was announced in the Tropic of Cancer.1 We most recently adhered to this concept of our appellate scope of review in Amato.2 In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has observed this same principle in numerous cases; e.g., Jacobellis v. Ohio.3 In Jacobellis the United States Supreme Court stated:
“. . . We are told that the determination whether a particular motion picture, book, or other work of expression is obscene can be treated as a purely factual judgment on which a jury’s verdict is all but conclusive, or that in any event the decision can be left essentially to state and lower federal courts, with this court exercising only a limited review such as that needed to determine whether the ruling below is supported by ‘sufficient evidence.’ The suggestion is appealing, since it would lift from our shoulders a difficult, recurring, and unpleasant task. But we cannot accept it. . . . Since it is only ‘obscenity’ that is excluded from the constitutional protection, the question whether a particular work is obscene necessarily implicates an issue of constitutional law. . . . *712Such an issue, we think, must ultimately he decided by this court. ...” 4
This court, then, is obliged to make an independent evaluation of these magazines in terms of the proper test as to whether they are obscene. In making that determination, the proper test to apply (as the majority state) is prescribed by Roth-Memoirs. This test, which was followed most recently by this court in Amato, requires three elements to be present before a periodical is deemed obscene. These elements have been repeated many times and these elements are:
“. . . (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.” 5
The United States Supreme Court has made it clear that in connection with (c) the test is whether the matter is “utterly without redeeming social value,” and that the concept of balancing is erroneous. This, too, was made clear in Jacobellis.6
In judging the obscenity of a publication, the United States Supreme Court has declared that the standard to be applied is national and not of a single community.7 The first amendment under the Federal Constitution is involved. This court is bound by every federal constitutional provision when applicable, as here, to the states. We are therefore obliged to apply federal standards on *713the question of obscenity just as we would in matters of civil rights, search and seizure, self-incrimination, and jury trial.
In Jacdbellis, the United States Supreme Court further stated:
“. . . The court has regularly been compelled, in reviewing criminal convictions challenged under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to reconcile the conflicting rights of the local community which brought the prosecution and of the individual defendant. Such a task is admittedly difficult and delicate, but it is inherent in the court’s duty of determining whether a particular conviction worked a deprivation of rights guaranteed by the Federal Constitution.” 8
Although the community standard was approved in McCauley v. Tropic of Cancer, the national standard was used here by the trial court and was also used by stipulation in the Amato Case.
I would affirm, not because the jury verdict is supported by substantial evidence in view of the entire record, but because of my independent examination of the publications and, in the light of the proper test of obscenity, I would find them obscene.

 State v. Amato (1971), 49 Wis. 2d 638, 641, 183 N. W. 2d 29.

 (1964), 378 U. S. 184, 84 Sup. Ct. 1676, 12 L. Ed. 2d 793. See also: Redrup v. New York (1967), 386 U. S. 767, 87 Sup. Ct. 1414, 18 L. Ed. 2d 515, and cases following Bedrup.

 Jacobellis v. Ohio, supra, footnote 3, at pages 187, 188.

 Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966), 383 U. S. 413, 418, 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.

 Supra, footnote 3, at page 191.

 See, e.g., Jacobellis v. Ohio, supra, footnote 3, at pages 192-195.

 Id. at page 194.