People v. Gilmore

120 Misc. 2d 741, 468 N.Y.S.2d 965, 1983 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 3790
CourtMount Vernon City Court
DecidedApril 13, 1983
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 120 Misc. 2d 741 (People v. Gilmore) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mount Vernon City Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Gilmore, 120 Misc. 2d 741, 468 N.Y.S.2d 965, 1983 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 3790 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1983).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Sam Eisenberg, J.

The defendant is charged with obscenity in the second degree, in violation of subdivision 1 of section 235.05 of the Penal Law, promoting prostitution in violation of section 230.40 of the Penal Law, and promoting the exposure of a female in violation of section 245.02 of the Penal Law.

[742]*742The defendant has challenged the constitutionality of each of the sections of the Penal Law under which he is charged. Additionally, he has moved to suppress the use in evidence of certain films and a video recorder, seized from him without a warrant and without prior judicial scrutiny.

These motions are disposed of as follows:

1. The constitutionality of sections 235.05

and 235.00 of the Penal Law.

The defendant challenges the constitutionality of section 235.05'of the Penal Law as being excessively restrictive of the right of free expression. It is the contention of the defendant that New York’s obscenity statute has exceeded the bounds established by the United States Supreme Court in Miller v California (413 US 15) by the inclusion of the acts of sadism and masochism in its definition of that which may be regarded as being obscene.

In 1973, in the landmark case of Miller v California (supra), the Supreme Court of the United States formulated its current standards against which particular material or acts are to be tested to determine whether they are obscene. This is the three-tier test adopted by Miller (supra):

(a) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

(b) whether the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable State law; and

(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

By way of examples of offensive conduct under part (b) of the standards, the court included (1) patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts normal or perverted, actual or simulated; and (2) patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions and lewd exhibition of the genitals.

In an apparent effort to conform its definition of obscenity to the standards of Miller (supra), the New York State Legislature amended section 235.00 of the Penal Law so as to fix the following as such definition:

[743]*743“§ 235.00 Obscenity; definition of terms
“The following definitions are applicable to sections 235.05, 235.10 and 235.15:
“1. ‘Obscene’. Any material or performance is ‘obscene’ if (a) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that considered as a whole, its predominant appeal is to the prurient interest in sex and (b) it depicts or describes in a patently offensive manner, actual or simulated: sexual intercourse, sodomy, sexual bestiality, masturbation, sadism, masochism, excretion or lewd exhibition of the genitals, and (c) considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political and scientific value. Predominant appeal shall be judged with reference to ordinary adults unless it appears from the character of the material or the circumstances of its dissemination to be designed for children or other specially susceptible audience.”

The thrust of the defendant’s objection is the contention that Miller’s standards relate to sexual material and conduct only and that the modified New York statute is rendered overbroad by its inclusion of sadism and masochism as obscene acts.

But, the defendant herein is not charged with having committed nor having promoted any acts of sadism or masochism. And by the ordinary rules of constitutional construction and determination a person may not be heard to challenge a statute which is constitutionally valid as to him, on the ground that this same statute may be unconstitutional when applied to another set of circumstances and another defendant, not then before the court. (Broadrick v Oklahoma, 413 US 601.) That principle flows from the view that the courts are not constituted to deal with moot matters but rather with real situations. “A closely related principle is that constitutional rights are personal and may not be asserted vicariously” (Broadrick v Oklahoma, supra, p 610). Some exceptions to that basic rule have been recognized. Thus, a defendant may attack the constitutionality of a statute as being overbroad where the outcome of the case may seriously affect the rights of persons not before the court and who may have no effective avenue for the preservation of their rights. Such claims of overbreadth [744]*744have been entertained “where statutes, by their terms, purport to regulate the time, place, and manner of expressive or communicative conduct * * * and where such conduct has required official approval under laws that delegated standardless discretionary power to local functionaries, resulting in virtually unre viewable prior restraints on First Amendment rights.” (Broadrick v Oklahoma, supra, p 613.) The doctrine of overbreadth is a limited one and must be sparingly used. It should not be invoked, particularly with respect to statutes which seek to control conduct rather than speech, except where the overbreadth is real and substantial and truly threatens the rights of persons not then before the court. This court perceives no such danger by the inclusion of depiction or description of sadism or masochism in a patently offensive manner within the definition of obscenity. A person who may be charged with the presentation, promotion or possession of obscene material dealing with sadism or masochism, will in no sense be affected by a finding in this court that the statute being attacked, insofar as it is applied to defendant’s alleged conduct, is constitutional. A finding by this court that the presentation of movies depicting obscene sexual acts falls within Miller’s standards would in no sense bar a defendant, who is charged in another case with depicting obscene acts of sadism and masochism, from urging that Miller (supra) did not contemplate such conduct and that section 235.00 of the Penal Law should therefore be declared unconstitutional as it may apply to such acts of sadism and masochism. In any event if such contention were sustained in another case, not now before the court, it would probably permit the excision of the words found to be offensive and would allow the remainder of the statute to stand. That process is in accord with a fundamental rule of statutory construction which permits the invalidation of a part of a statute and the upholding of the remainder where the parts are separable and the upholding of the sustained portion is not clearly inconsistent with the rejection of the severed portion. That process of constitutional adjudication is encouraged by subdivision d of section 150 of McKinney’s Statutes (McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 1) which provides: “A statute may be unconstitutional in one part and valid in another part, and the unconstitutionality [745]*745of one part does not necessarily invalidate the entire statute.

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Bluebook (online)
120 Misc. 2d 741, 468 N.Y.S.2d 965, 1983 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 3790, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-gilmore-nymtverncityct-1983.