Court Opinion

ID: 9851730
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:18:44.228327+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:14.129423
License: Public Domain

VAN HOOMISSEN, J.,
dissenting.
The question is whether ORS 167.065(1)(b) is sufficiently narrowly drawn to survive an overbreadth challenge. I would hold that the statute passes both state and federal constitutional muster and that the trial court properly overruled defendant’s demurrer. On the merits, I would affirm defendant’s conviction. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
Oregon statutes prohibiting the dissemination of obscene materials to minors are patterned after New York statutes whose constitutionality was upheld in Ginsberg v. New York, 390 US 629, 88 S Ct 1274, 20 L Ed 2d 195 (1968). Defendant contends that Oregon’s statutes differ materially from New York’s in that the latter prohibit only the dissemination of obscene materials “harmful to minors,” a term that is statutorily defined so as to incorporate a constitutionally permissible definition of obscenity. Defendant argues that the absence of any such limitation in Oregon’s statutes renders them unconstitutionally overbroad. However, such a limitation is found in the requirement in ORS 167.085(3)1 that the language constituting “obscenity” be the essence of the contraband matter, not “merely an incidental part of an otherwise nonoffending whole,” and not serving any “legitimate purpose therein other than mere titillation.”
ORS 167.085(3) should not be construed as narrowly as it was in State v. Frink, 60 Or App 209, 653 P2d 553 (1982), because, from an examination of the legislative history of our *664statutes, it is clear that that subsection was intended to apply to all forms of furnishing obscene matter to minors. ORS 167.065, which now prohibits “furnishing” obscene materials to minors, originated as Article 29, Section 2, Preliminary Draft No. 1 (December, 1969) of the Oregon Criminal Code. It punishes, not a person who “furnishes” obscene materials to minors, but one who “sells” such materials to minors. At the time of the preliminary draft, Article 29, Section 1(9), defined “sells,” as: “giving or loaning for monetary consideration or other valuable commodity or service”; and Article 29, Section 6(5), now ORS 167.085(3), spoke of the “sale, showing or display” of such materials. Proposed Article 29, Section 2, was amended to prohibit, not the sale, but the furnishing of obscene materials to minors. See Minutes, Subcommittee No. 1, Criminal Law Revision Commission, January 8, 1970, at 11-12. Accordingly Article 29, Section 1(9), was amended to change “sells” to “furnishes”; and “furnishes” was defined as “to sell, give, rent, loan or otherwise provide.” Apparently through oversight, the language of Article 29, section 6(5), now ORS 167.085(3), was not amended to change the term “sale” to its logical successor, the term “furnishing.” See amendments to Preliminary Draft No. 1, Proposed Oregon Criminal Code (January 22, 1970).
From there on, the language of the presently material statutes remained substantially unchanged; but the commentary to the drafts and final version of the Code continue to suggest, as they always had, that the language of present ORS 167.085(3) was intended “to allow the sale, distribution or display of magazines, books, films, etc., in which the offending items constitute only a minor part thereof and serve some legitimate purpose.” Commentary to Proposed Oregon Criminal Code 260 (1970), at 252-253.
In that light, we were wrong in assuming in State v. Frink, supra, that the language of ORS 167.085(3) concerning the “sale” of obscene materials is limited to the “selling]” of such materials referred to in ORS 167.060(3), to the exclusion of the other forms of “furnish[ing]” material listed in that subsection. To the contrary, ORS 167.085(3) should be construed to apply to all forms of “furnishing]” obscene materials to minors proscribed by ORS 167.065.

 Defendant does not raise any affirmative defense under ORS 167.085. That statute provides, in relevant part:
“In any prosecution under ORS 167.065 to 167.080, it is an affirmative defense for the defendant to prove:
“(3) That the defendant was charged with the sale, showing, exhibition or display of an item, those portions of which might otherwise be contraband forming merely an incidental part of an otherwise nonoffending whole, and serving some legitimate purpose therein other than titillation.”