Court Opinion

ID: 9742577
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:16:25.476372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:33.905570
License: Public Domain

The following opinion was filed on February 5, 1974:
Per Curiam
(on motion for rehearing). In this court’s original opinion in State ex rel. Chobot v. Circuit Court, this court wrote:
“. . . Whether a work appeals to the prurient interest and whether it depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and whether it has serious *374bliterary, artistic, political or scientific value are to be determined by its effect upon the average person applying contemporary community standards.” (Emphasis supplied.) State ex rel. Chobot v. Circuit Court, ante, p. 354, 369, 212 N. W. 2d 690.
This has been read by both the petitioner and the respondent therein as constituting a disavowance by this court of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Mishkin v. New York (1966), 383 U. S. 502, 86 Sup. Ct. 958, 16 L. Ed. 2d 56 as it applies to allegedly obscene material which is directed towards a deviant group. Such is not the case. If material is aimed at a particular deviant group rather than the average person, then such material should be judged upon its impact upon that deviant group.
Thus, it is our opinion that the following clause which appears in footnote 4 on page 364 should be withdrawn.
“. . . this reservation is no longer relevant under Miller because the test is the average man.”
Similarly, it is our opinion that this court’s opinion should be amended to read as follows:
Whether a work appeals to the prurient interest and whether it depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and whether it has serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value are to be determined by its effect upon the average person applying contemporary community standards. (See, however, Mishkin v. New York, supra.)