Court Opinion

ID: 9757128
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:19:35.442407+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:35.189678
License: Public Domain

*50Loiselle, J.
(concurring). As stated in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S. Ct. 2607, 37 L. Ed. 2d 419, the United States Supreme Court delineated a three-pronged test for the identification of obscene acts or materials. The-first of these criteria inquires into “whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.” Miller v. California, supra, 24. In a subsequent case elaborating upon Miller, the court stated that “[a] juror is entitled to draw on his own knowledge of the views of the average person in the community or vicinage from which he comes for making the required determination, just as he is entitled to draw on his knowledge of the propensities of a ‘reasonable’ person in other areas of the law.” Hamling v. United, States, 418 U.S. 87, 104, 94 S. Ct. 2887, 41 L. Ed. 2d 590. In discussing the “reasonable person” standard, the Hamling case indicates that no evidence of a community standard per se is required. In those cases in which the challenged material is of debatable obscenity, it might well behoove the state to submit such evidence, but on the basis of my interpretation of the relevant eases, I cannot say that this is a prerequisite to a valid conviction.
The evidentiary issue as it pertains to the community standard, however, need not have been reached in this case. As in all criminal prosecutions, the state must establish each element of the crime. State v. Beauton, 170 Conn. 234, 240, 365 A.2d 1105; State v. Brown, 163 Conn. 52, 64, 301 A.2d 547. In an obscenity case, the first step in this process involves establishing the specific nature of the act or material in question. Once this is estab*51lished, it is for the trier of fact, he it court or jury, to draw on his or her own knowledge of the community to determine whether the average person would find such material to be in contravention of the community standard. See, e.g., Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 93 S. Ct. 2628, 37 L. Ed. 2d 446. In the present case, the state failed to submit sufficient evidence of the nature of the performance itself. While the court, acting as the trier of fact, had the testimony of two police officers on which to base its judgment, that testimony alone did not provide sufficient information on which it could base an independent judgment. In the absence of more evidence establishing the nature of the performance, a conviction could not he warranted, and the state has failed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. On this basis, I concur in the result reached in the majority opinion.
In this opinion House, C. J., concurred.