Court Opinion

ID: 9850010
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:50:55.606178+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:30.364744
License: Public Domain

Gunter, Justice,
concurring specially. I concur in the court’s judgment of reversal today solely because I consider that I am bound by the majority decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, supra, and Miller v. California, supra, rendered June 21, 1973.
Were it not for those two recent decisions I would hold that the Georgia statute (Code Ann. § 26-2101) which permits the state to suppress "obscene materials” is vague and overly broad so as to *319be constitutionally unenforceable.
While I do not consider the First Amendment to be absolute, it is my view that First Amendment proscriptions, made applicable to Georgia by the Fourteenth Amendment, do not permit the state to suppress expression unless such suppressed expression is clearly defined by the state so that a reasonable man can see the line of demarcation between protected expression and suppressed expression. The definition of "obscene materials” that may be suppressed by the state, contained in the present Georgia statute, does not, to my mind, come even close to establishing that line of demarcation. A reasonable man or, for that matter, seven supposedly reasonable judges, utilizing objective criteria which in the last resort end up being really subjective criteria, cannot distinguish constitutionally protected material from material that is unprotected by the First Amendment.
The net result of the Miller (obscenity concept) case is that this court acts as a seven-man board of censors in the State of Georgia, and the Supreme Court of the United States acts as a nine-man board of censors throughout the nation, with a majority of this court determining what is constitutionally protected or unprotected in Georgia and a majority of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States determining what is constitutionally protected or unprotected at the national level. As Mr. Justice Brennan so aptly put it in his dissenting opinion in Paris Adult Theatre I: "The problem is, rather, that one cannot say with certainty that material is obscene until at least five members of this court, applying inevitably obscure standards, have pronounced it so.” See also the decision of this court in Jenkins v. State, 230 Ga. 726 (199 SE2d 183) (1973).
However, because of the majority decisions in Miller v.California and Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, supra, I am required to hold that the present Georgia statute defining obscene material that may be suppressed by the state is not a constitutionally vague and over broad statute.
I therefore concur in the judgment of reversal.