Court Opinion

ID: 9667319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:42:24.583752+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:37.053776
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge.
Defendants challenge the trial court’s denial of their motion to suppress. In each of these cases police officers viewed the allegedly obscene films, made a personal determination that the films were obscene, arrested the defendants without warrant, and seized the films to be preserved as evidence, without a warrant or prior adver sary hearing on the issue of obscenity.
The majority opinion would uphold these seizures under the authority of the recent Supreme Court decision in Heller v. New York, 413 U.S. 483, 93 S.Ct. 2789, 37 L.Ed.2d 745, decided June 25, 1973. In the Heller case a judge attended a movie theater and viewed a film. At the end of the film the judge signed a search warrant for seizure of the film because in his opinion the film was obscene under the applicable New York statute. At the trial on an obscenity charge the defendant moved to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that the seizure of the film without prior adversary hearing on the issue of obscenity, violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The court concluded that there was no absolute right to a prior adversary hearing where allegedly obscene material is seized, pursuant to a warrant, to preserve the material as evidence. The court distinguishes sei*697zure of material for destruction, a form of prior restraint, and seizure for preservation as evidence. As to the latter, the court’s opinion states, 1. c. 492-493, 93 S.Ct. p. 2795, “ . . .If such a seizure is pursuant to a warrant, issued after a determination of probable cause by a neutral magistrate, and, following the seizure, a prompt judicial determination of the obscenity issue in an adversary proceeding- is available at the request of any interested party, the seizure is constitutionally permissible. In addition, on a showing to the trial court that other copies of the film are not available to the exhibitor, the court should permit the seized film to be copied so that showing can be continued pending a judicial determination of the obscenity issue in an adversary proceeding . . ."
The recent Supreme Court decision in Roaden v. Kentucky, 413 U.S. 496, 93 S.Ct. 2796, 37 L.Ed.2d 757 (1973), is dispositive of the seizure issue in this case. In Roaden a sheriff viewed a film at a local drive-in theater. At the end of the film he arrested the defendant on a charge of exhibiting an obscene film and seized the film, without warrant, for use as evidence. On appeal at the state level the seizure was upheld as incident to a lawful arrest. The United States Supreme Court reversed and struck down the seizure. The court’s opinion says 1. c. 504-505, 93 U.S. p. 2801. “ . . . Seizing a film, then being exhibited to the general public, presents essentially the same restraint on expression as the seizure of all the books in a bookstore. Such precipitous action by a police officer, without the authority of a constitutionally sufficient warrant, is plainly a form of prior restraint and is, in those circumstances, unreasonable under Fourth Amendment standards. The seizure is unreasonable, not simply because it would have been easy to secure a warrant, but rather because prior restraint of the right of expression, whether by books or films, calls for a higher hurdle in the evaluation of reasonableness. The setting of the bookstore or the commercial theater, each presumptively under the protection of the First Amendment, invokes such Fourth Amendment warrant requirements because we examine what is ‘unreasonable’ in the light of the values of freedom of expression . . .

“Moreover, ordinary human experience should teach that the seizure of a movie film from a commercial theater with regularly scheduled performances, where a film is being played and replayed to paid audiences, presents a very different situation from that in which contraband is changing hands or where a robbery or assault is being perpetrated. In the latter settings, the probable cause for an arrest might justify the seizure of weapons, or other evidence or instruments of crime, without a warrant (citations omitted). Where there are exigent circumstances in which police action literally must be ‘now or never’ to preserve the evidence of the crime, it is reasonable to permit action without prior judicial evaluation . . . ”
Reading the Roaden and Heller cases together it appears that absent exigent circumstances which indicate that seizure of allegedly obscene material for preservation as evidence is a “now or never” situation, seizure is only permissible after some type of hearing on the issue of obscenity. The hearing can be a prior adversary hearing to determine obscenity. Or the hearing can be ex parte and take the form of showing and determination of probable cause by a neutral magistrate to support issuance of a search warrant for seizure of the material as obscene. Neither type of determination was made in the cases before us and the seizures were therefore invalid.
The majority opinion does not set forth Sec. 26.144 of the ordinance, an unusual provision which relates to “Adjudication of Obscenity”. It reads as follows:
“Section 26.144. Adjudication of obscenity. In construing the meaning of *698the terms or phrases used in this article which relate to Federal Constitutional Principles, only such meanings or inclusion shall be adopted as have been settled by controlling majority adopted opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States and not otherwise where such opinions exist; provided further, it is the intent of this article not to adopt any noncontrolling personal view or opinions of any justice or a number thereof less than the majority of the Supreme Court of the United States. Authorized as passed March 5, 1971.”
What has been attempted here is enactment of a “Super Ordinance” — one which is self-amending and will never be unconstitutional because it incorporates by reference all majority opinions of the Supreme Court as they are decided. What is prohibited by the ordinance changes from day to day, depending upon the latest Supreme Court decision which, to use the words of the late Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, makes it comparable to an excursion ticket, “good for this day and trip only.”
This provision makes more vague the already ephemeral meaning of obscenity, because it allows prosecution of an individual for conduct pertaining to material which though “obscene” under the definition prevailing at the time of prosecution, was not obscene at the time of the alleged illegal conduct. The case at hand is a prime example of this. At the time the movies in the cases at bar were shown the law was as recognized in Hartstein v. Missouri, 404 U.S. 988, 92 S.Ct. 531, 30 L.Ed.2d 539 (1971) [which relied on Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 767, 87 S.Ct. 1414, 18 L.Ed.2d 515 (1967) to reverse a Missouri conviction for showing the film, “Night of Lust”], not the law announced by the Supreme Court on June 21, 1973, in Miller v. California which is here applied to make illegal acts occurring in 1971. There is thus no way for anyone to tell in advance what is legal under this ordinance and what is not. This violates basic due process standards.
There is another ground on which I dissent. The Missouri Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 8, provides “That no law shall be passed impairing the freedom of speech, no matter by what means communicated; that every person shall be free to say, write or publish, or otherwise communicate whatever he will on any subject, being responsible for all abuses of that liberty . . . ” The spirit of this clause of our constitution is that all speech is protected until the freedom is abused — that is, unless the speech infringes on the rights of others. This idea is illustrated by the saying “Freedom ends where the other man’s nose begins.” The constitutional protection of freedom of speech is aptly expressed by the converse of this statement, “Freedom extends to where the other man’s nose begins.”
We defeat the spirit of this constitutional provision by deciding that the state may dictate the material and adult individual may purchase and the films he may see, though there is no showing that the individual’s exercise of these freedoms does harm to or infringes on the rights of others.
Freedom of speech is not an absolute: all speech is not protected. It has long been recognized that this protection does not extend to libel and slander, fighting words, and obscenity. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942). Why have these areas been singled out as an exception to constitutional protection? Because to protect these forms of speech for one individual necessarily limits the rights and freedoms of another. But where there is no limitation of another’s freedoms, these forms of speech too, should be protected. Words which would otherwise be slanderous, for example, are protected if there is no publication or if no showing of damage can be made. Likewise fighting words are protected if they are spoken in private. Why then, should not otherwise obscene publications be protected if there is no showing of harm to others ?
*699A state has a valid interest in proscribing obscene speech to protect minors, where there is evidence of pandering, or where the material is presented in such a manner that it intrudes upon the privacy of the unwilling listener or viewer. Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 767, 87 S.Ct. 1414, 18 L.Ed.2d 515 (1967). But where, as here, there is no such evidence, the right of a consenting adult to see, read, and hear what he pleases should be protected.
I therefore respectfully dissent.