Court Opinion

ID: 9552036
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:03:47.439+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:27.693959
License: Public Domain

*84WRIGHT, C. J.
I concur in the opinion of the majority with some reluctance and with a considerable feeling of futility. I concur for the reason that I believe our statutory definition of obscenity (Pen. Code, §311) meets the requirements spelled out by the majority of the members of the Supreme Court in Miller v. California (1973) 413 U.S. 15 [37 L.Ed.2d 419, 93 S.Ct. 2607] and especially as fortified by the majority opinion in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton (1973) 413 U.S. 49 [37 L.Ed.2d 446, 93 S.Ct. 2628] decided the same day as Miller. As of this day those opinions represent the law of this land.
Although I do not hesitate in appropriate cases to rely exclusively upon the provisions of our own state Constitution and have done so on many occasions, I am unwilling to follow the route taken by the dissenters in the case now before us. We are not, for example, confronted with the type of situation which occurred when a majority of the United States Supreme Court came down with their decisions in United States v. Robinson (1973) 414 U.S. 218 [38 L.Ed.2d 427, 94 S.Ct. 467] and Gustafson v. Florida (1973) 414 U.S. 260 [38 L.Ed.2d 456, 94 S.Ct. 488]. We were obliged to make a decision forthwith whether every citizen subjected to a custodial arrest for a traffic offense, however minor, could be subjected to a complete body search at the scene of the stop. This was in direct opposition to the position taken by a majority of our court on numerous occasions. (See People v. Superior Court (Kiefer) (1970) 3 Cal.3d 807 [91 Cal.Rptr. 729, 478 P.2d 449, 45 A.L.R.3d 559]; People v. Superior Court (Simon) (1972) 7 Cal.3d 186 [101 Cal.Rptr. 837, 496 P.2d 1205].) We were required either to rely upon our own Constitution or permit the citizens of our state to be subjected to searches which we had long held were violative of constitutional rights guaranteed to them. I had no hesitation as to which way our course lay and joined the majority in People v. Brisendine (1975) 13 Cal.3d 528 [119 Cal.Rptr. 315, 531 P.2d 1099] (see also People v. Norman (1975) 14 Cal.3d 929 [123 Cal.Rptr. 109, 538 P.2d 237]) relying upon our state Constitution to afford the people of our state the right to be free of searches such as those approved in Robinson and Gustafson. It was essential that we act at the first' possible moment when we were presented with a case which embraced the essential issue of the two federal cases.
No similar demand for an immediate solution is present in the case now before us and I do not see that haste is indicated. The whole subject of what is and what is not pornographic is a slowly evolving, always eroding, ever changing concept, laced as it is with a continuing concern with First Amendment protections in conflict with the current moral, ethical, philosophical, religious, and sexual beliefs and practices of our *85citizens. We are all aware that attitudes change from time to time and what was considered as pornographic a few short years ago is now acceptable to a large majority of our people.
A few examples which have occurred during my not overly long life are indicative of the changes I mentioned. Throughout my academic and college days a woman’s committee of three selected from a civic organization sat as a board of censors and determined by majority vote what motion pictures could be shown to the people of Pasadena, and the committee alone (there was no provision for an appeal from their decision) was free to ban or censor any film or delete therefrom all segments which might be offensive to a majority of the members of that committee and, in their judgment, to the residents of Pasadena.
As a law student it was necessary to travel to Quincy, Massachusetts, to view a stage production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude,” one of his more soporific plays, because a well meaning self-appointed group bearing the appropriate sobriquet, “The Watch and Ward Society,” determined that the Nobel and Pulitzer prize author’s offering was offensive to the good people of the Boston area. We are all acquainted with the trials and tribulations of James Joyce’s masterpiece, “Ulysses” (also soporific) before an individual was legally permitted to peruse it. There are a myriad of other examples I could mention.
But all of the “protections” I have described have fortunately disappeared and eventually, I believe so will the indefinite and vague “safety precautions” of Miller come to a similar fate. Perhaps what will evolve will be the adoption of the position advocated by Mr. Justice Brennan in his illuminating dissenting opinion in Paris Adult Theatre /. He wrote: “In short, while I cannot say that the interests of the State—apart from the question of juveniles and unconsenting adults —are trivial or nonexistent, I am compelled to conclude that these interests cannot justify the substantial damage to constitutional rights and to this Nation’s judicial machinery that inevitably results from state efforts to bar the distribution even of unprotected material to consenting adults. [Citations.] I would hold, therefore, that at least in the absence of distribution to juveniles or obtrusive exposure to unconsenting adults, the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit the State and Federal Governments from attempting wholly to suppress sexually oriented materials on the basis of their allegedly ‘obscene’ contents.” {Id., at pp. 112-113 [37 L.Ed.2d at p. 490].)The adoption of such a standard might *86well lead the way to a constitutional interpretation that will be free of the vagueness that haunts Miller and might well be enforceable.
The dissenters in the case at bench adopt the same approach in part but have extended to some degree the holding of Stanley v. Georgia (1969) 394 U.S. 557 [22 L.Ed.2d 542, 89 S.Ct. 1243],