Rhodes v. State

283 So. 2d 351
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedSeptember 19, 1973
Docket41416
StatusPublished
Cited by47 cases

This text of 283 So. 2d 351 (Rhodes v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Rhodes v. State, 283 So. 2d 351 (Fla. 1973).

Opinion

283 So.2d 351 (1973)

James E. RHODES, Appellant,
v.
The STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 41416.

Supreme Court of Florida.

September 19, 1973.

*352 Paul Shimek, Jr., Pensacola, for appellant.

Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., and Raymond L. Marky, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

DEKLE, Justice.

We deal here with the "old" Florida obscenity statute, § 847.011, which continues as law.[1] Two movie films publicly exhibited by appellant at his Navy Point Adult Theater in Pensacola, titled "He and She" and "Sex Family Robinson on the Farm" were found by a jury to be obscene in violation *353 of Florida's 1967 obscenity statute, § 847.011, which prohibits the sale, distribution, showing or possession of "any obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent, sadistic or masochistic book, magazine ... photograph, motion picture film... ." There is no further amplification of these words in the statute[2] except (11)[3] setting forth the Roth test.[4]

Inasmuch as § 847.011(8)(b) injunctive proceedings were not invoked in this cause, the injunctive portion of the statute is of course not involved here.[5]

Appellant's offense occurred on May 5, 1971, under the earlier statute in question, § 847.011 to which our holding must of course be restricted, despite the recent June 21, 25, 1973, "cluster" of eight U.S. Supreme Court opinions on this perennial and "seemingly intractable" problem of obscenity.[6]

Appellant launches the following missiles of constitutional attack:

(1) unlawful search and seizure precluding admission of the films into evidence;
(2) non-obscenity of the films in question as a matter of law;
(3) unconstitutionality of Fla. Stat. § 847.011 because:
a) the statute does not provide for an adversary judicial hearing on obscenity prior to issuance of the warrant of seizure;
b) national and not contemporary community standards apply;
c) neither the statute, court rule nor practice and procedure in the courts provides for a prompt and final determination of the alleged obscenity.

SEIZURE WAS PROPER

Factually, appellant was tried and convicted by a jury based upon an indictment for violation of Fla. Stat. § 847.011, F.S.A. The grand jurors viewed either all or part of the two films involved. Some jurors viewed all of one film but not all of the other. Based upon affidavits submitted by the grand jurors and founded upon their collective viewing of the films as to content, the circuit judge issued a warrant for seizure of the films in question without a prior adversary judicial hearing. Immediately thereafter, the film was seized and the next day the indictment was returned by the grand jury against appellant. Motion *354 to suppress was denied. During the trial the films were actually shown to the jury, then testimony was taken. The trial judge in acting upon appellant's motions expressly declared Fla. Stat. § 847.011, F.S.A., constitutional and this direct appeal followed.[7]

Upon appellant's first challenge — seizure — he cites Roaden v. Kentucky, (1973), 413 U.S. 496, 93 S.Ct. 2796, 37 L.Ed.2d 757, which reversed denial of the motion to suppress obscene films on the ground of illegal seizure. Our case is no Roaden. In Roaden the seizure was clearly erroneous in that it was made without a warrant, simply upon a viewing of the film by a county sheriff at a local drive-in theater and without any prior judicial determination of obscenity. Sub judice 1) a warrant was issued; 2) following a consideration by the judge of sufficient factual affidavits of the grand jurors who went and viewed the films. Thus there was a prior judicial determination by the circuit judge, and at all times thereafter there was an available judicial review of the ruling (though appellant sought none).[8] The seizure was legal and the motion to suppress was correctly denied.[9]

EX POST FACTO APPLIES

The new U.S. Supreme Court cases are at once both amplifying and more restrictive: they are expansive in 1) expressing the principle of "authoritative construction"[10] to amplify the statutory language in order to meet whatever test is applicable on the date of the offense in question, and 2) in laying down a prospective new test which is less restrictive than Roth-Memoirs; but these new holdings also more severely limit the state in its permissible statutory regulation of obscenity to so-called "hardcore" materials of sexual acts expressly defined either in the statute or by authoritative construction thereof.

On the matter of standards of obscenity, the U.S. Supreme Court has now afforded a sensible test and guidelines in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973), and Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 93 S.Ct. 2628, 37 L.Ed.2d 446 (1973), decided on June 21, 1973. The new test will no doubt prove more effective in future infractions of § 847.011 and of the new Fla. Stat. Ch. 73-120. We cannot, in our view, however, by reason of ex post facto principles apply new standards in the now-judicially-approved "new test" of obscenity[11] to earlier offenses in determining the sufficiency of the statutory language to warn the average person of common intelligence as to what constitutes the prohibited offense. This is particularly true of "(c)" of the test in Miller as to "literary, etc. value". It may or may not be true of (a) and (b) in view of our statutory language and its construction as it may have been published as notice *355 to an offender on the date of the offense in question.

Sub judice the test set forth in these latest U.S. judicial holdings with respect to "c" ("literary value") as to what now constitutes obscenity was not available on May 5, 1971, as amplification of the notice to appellant of the proscribed conduct; such a modification of the old test in the new holdings cannot now be echoed to the date of the earlier offense.[12] The "old test" (Memoirs v. Mass., 383 U.S. 413, 419, 86 S.Ct. 975, 978, 16 L.Ed.2d 1 (1966)) that the allegedly obscene matter be "utterly without redeeming social value", must apply in such instance, for such was the test upon which defendant was on notice on the date (May 5, 1971) of the alleged violation. Said former test, then applicable, was correctly applied, however, in the trial below. Thus there was no error.

We hold that the "test" of what constitutes obscenity for purposes of notice of the proscribed conduct, and the test to be utilized at trial, is that which prevailed under the applicable statute as amplified by authoritative construction published at the time of the offense.[13]

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283 So. 2d 351, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rhodes-v-state-fla-1973.