Court Opinion

ID: 9722178
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:19:04.307135+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:31.184471
License: Public Domain

Mr. PRESIDING JUSTICE TRAPP dissenting: I dissent from the conclusion that the statute at issue does not cover the activities shown by the record. A substantial point of difference is the determination that the matters within the scope of the statute relate to or be equated with commercial prostitution. It appears that the opinion abandons the plain meaning of words. Ill. Rev. Stat. 16, ch. 38, par. 11 — 14, defines prostitution in the context of “acts for money”. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines assignation as an appointment of time and place especially for acts of illicit sexual relations. It is the use of premises regardless of whether there is commercialized vice. (Rhodes v. State, 208 Ark. 1043, 189 S.W.2d 379.) In the context of literature and history, assignation is a thing apart from the statutory prostitution or whorehouse. Again, we cannot agree that lewd must be equated with commercial prostitution. Lewd is defined in terms synonymous with obscene, salacious and sexually licentious. (Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary. ) The opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, Black’s Law Dictionary shows lewd synonymous with obscene or lascivious. The plain language of the statute announces three categories of nuisance, i.e., the lewd or obscene designed to incite lust or depravity albiet without necessarily immediate contemporaneous instant sexual acts; assignation in the sense of illicit sex relations albiet without “acts for money”, and finally the statutory prostitution. The trial court made an express finding that the premises were used for promotion of assignation, and there is testimony which supports such conclusion in the context of non-commercial prostitution. Again, the opinion does not make clear the evidence before the trial court as to a wall of the premises covered with pictures and photographs showing only hard core pornography as described in People v. Ridens, 51 Ill.2d 410, 282 N.E.2d 691, with the addition of matters showing beastliness. Ridens seems to determine that some matters may be obscene as a matter of law. I cannot agree that the record shows that the temporary injunction was improvidently granted.