Commonwealth v. Krasner

67 Pa. D. & C.2d 171, 1974 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 392
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Chester County
DecidedJanuary 7, 1974
Docketnos. 34, 36, 38, 39, 92
StatusPublished

This text of 67 Pa. D. & C.2d 171 (Commonwealth v. Krasner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Chester County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. Krasner, 67 Pa. D. & C.2d 171, 1974 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 392 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1974).

Opinion

KENT, J.,

This matter is before the court on defendants’ motions for new trial and in arrest of judgment. Defendants were, at the time of [172]*172their arrest, the operators of a store known as the “Adult Book Store,” located at 1009 West Chester Pike, West Goshen Township, Chester County, Pa.

Following arrests in January of 1972, defendants were charged with violations of The Penal Code of June 24, 1939, P. L. 872, sec. 524, 18 PS §4524, (now Crimes Code of December 6, 1972, P. L. 1068, 18 PS §5903) in selling and possessing with intent to sell obscene literature. Following a trial of two weeks duration, verdicts were rendered by the jury which acquitted defendant Pyne of the charge brought against him to January term, 1972, no. 38 but convicted Pyne and his co-defendant, Krasner, on the remaining bills of indictment. As directed by the court, the jury returned a separate finding with respect to each of the publications and devices included in the multiple charge bills of indictment.

Subsequent to the trial on said charges but prior to argument on defendants’ motions, a series of decisions were rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States concerning what that court has referred to as “the intractable obscenity problem”: Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. Dallas, 390 U. S. 676, 704 (1968). Inasmuch as the instant case has not reached finality, the principles enunciated by that tribunal must, to the extent applicable, be applied herein: Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 (1965).

Defendants have set forth a variety of grounds in support of their motions which will be considered seriatim.

I. Initially, defendants contend that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15, 93 S. Ct. 2607 37 L. Ed. 2d 419 (1973), renders section 524 unconstitutional. With this contention, we do not agree.

[173]*173Under the Pennsylvania statute, “ ‘Obscene’ as used in this section, means that which, to the average person applying contemporary community standards, has as its dominant theme, taken as a whole, an appeal to prurient interest.” Subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court of this Commonwealth have required that proof of obscenity include patent offensiveness and an utter lack of redeeming social value: Commonwealth v. LaLonde, 447 Pa. 364 (1972); Commonwealth v. Dell Publications, Inc., 427 Pa. 189 (1967). This was in accord with the elements of obscenity as set forth by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U. S. 413, 419 (1966).

In the Miller decision (page 23) the Federal tribunal expressly abandoned the Memoirs test of obscenity and, in its place, declares that:

“State statutes designed to regulate obscene materials must be carefully limited ... As a result, we now confíne the permissible scope of such regulation to works which depict or describe sexual conduct. That conduct must be specifically defined by the applicable state law, as written or authoritatively construed. A state offense must also be limited to works which, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex, which portray sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and which, taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

The boundaries thus established for constitutionally permissible proscription of obscene material are broader than those encompassed by section 524 of The Penal Code. See People v. Enskat, 33 Cal. A. 3rd 900 (1973). Both tests require that the concept of obscenity be limited to works which, taken as a whole, appeal to a prurient interest in sex. Both tests require the [174]*174portrayal of sexual conduct in a patently offensive manner. The Miller test applies to the works which, taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. Section 524, as noted above, requires that the material be utterly without redeeming social value: Commonwealth v. Dell Publications, Inc., supra. It is apparent that the latter requirement is more restrictive than the former. The scope of regulation under Miller is confined to works which depict or describe sexual conduct. Section 524, as authoritatively construed, is limited to material which is patently offensive in its description or representation of sexual matters.

We accordingly conclude that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Miller case has not rendered this Commonwealth’s statute unconstitutional.

II. In their motions, defendants contend that “the jury erroneously found the defendant guilty after the Commonwealth’s own witnesses conceded that the material in question under the indictment had redeeming social value.” The record does not support this contention.

Two expert witnesses were called by the Commonwealth. The sum total of their very lengthy and detailed direct and cross-examinations is, perhaps, best summarized in the words of the stipulation entered of record which, it was agreed, would summarize the experts’ conclusion in this regard. That stipulation provided that:

“. . . In the case of each book . . . there is in the book at least one article, which, if read separate and apart from the accompanying pictures, would have some redeeming social value; and that in the case of each of these books ... it is his opinion that the book [175]*175taken as a whole would be utterly without redeeming social value, because the tone, character, and the value of the book is fixed by the character of the included pictures.”

Defendants contend that such testimony necessarily imparts to the questioned works the requisite modicum of socially redeeming value. Such was not the conclusion testified to by the Commonwealth’s witnesses. That testimony was to the effect that the innocuous and quasi-scientific texts were so juxtaposed with garish photography as to render the works “utterly without redeeming social value.” As the Commonwealth demonstrated in its redirect examination of its expert, the insertion of a Shakespearean soliloquy in a magazine did not, per se, confer redeeming social value.

By its verdicts, the jury determined the questioned items to be obscene under instructions to which defendants take no exception. Accepting the testimony of the Commonwealth’s witnesses in the view most favorable to its position, as we must for purposes of these motions, we are unable to agree that the verdicts were contrary to the evidence in this regard.

III. Defendants further contend that the indictments were fatally defective in failing to charge that defendants had knowledge that the publications sold were obscene. Under our Rules of Criminal Procedure, such a contention is properly the subject of pretrial application: Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure 304, 305. Pretrial challenges to the bills of indictment were, in fact, presented 'ánd heard but did not raise the question of scienter. Notwithstanding this fact, defendants raised the issue of scienter at the outset of the trial.

Defendants rely on the case of Smith v.

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Related

Holt v. United States
218 U.S. 245 (Supreme Court, 1910)
Smith v. California
361 U.S. 147 (Supreme Court, 1960)
Linkletter v. Walker
381 U.S. 618 (Supreme Court, 1965)
Schmerber v. California
384 U.S. 757 (Supreme Court, 1966)
Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. City of Dallas
390 U.S. 676 (Supreme Court, 1968)
Miller v. California
413 U.S. 15 (Supreme Court, 1973)
Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton
413 U.S. 49 (Supreme Court, 1973)
Commonwealth v. Aljoe
216 A.2d 50 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1966)
Commonwealth v. Kravitz
161 A.2d 861 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1960)
Commonwealth v. LaLONDE
288 A.2d 782 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1972)
Commonwealth v. Dell Publications, Inc.
233 A.2d 840 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1967)

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67 Pa. D. & C.2d 171, 1974 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 392, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-krasner-pactcomplcheste-1974.