“Federal prosecutors trying to salvage one of the government’s biggest obscenity cases this decade asked an appeals court Wednesday to reinstate obscenity charges against a couple who sold pornographic videos depicting simulated rape and murder,” as reported here. Ever since Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit making private possession of obscene materials a crime. This means that possessing obscene material is alright, but distributing it is a no no.
The quandary, posed by the defendants’ attorney, H. Louis Sirkin, today: “In order for me to exercise my right to liberty, I have to get it.” Otherwise the right is an empty one.
Cary Wiggins on the Web