State v. Gambino

362 So. 2d 1107
CourtSupreme Court of Louisiana
DecidedSeptember 5, 1978
Docket61728
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 362 So. 2d 1107 (State v. Gambino) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Gambino, 362 So. 2d 1107 (La. 1978).

Opinion

362 So.2d 1107 (1978)

STATE of Louisiana
v.
Warren GAMBINO.

No. 61728.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

September 5, 1978.
Rehearing Denied October 5, 1978.

*1108 Patrick A. Rankin and William M. Lucas, Jr., Dufour, Levy, Marx, Lucas & Osborne, New Orleans, for defendant-appellant.

William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Harry F. Connick, Dist. Atty., Louise S. Korns, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

SUMMERS, Justice.

By a bill of information the District Attorney of Orleans Parish charged defendant Warren Gambino with the exhibition, management and display of hard-core sexual conduct in the July 1977 issue of a magazine entitled "National Screw", a violation of the Obscenity Act. La.Rev.Stat. 14:106.[1]*1109 After trial by jury defendant was convicted and sentenced to pay a fine of $1,000 and to serve six months in the parish prison. The assignments of error urged on this appeal are grouped into six arguments.

Briefly, the record facts giving rise to this prosecution show that defendant is the owner of the Fast Stop Food Store No. 3 at the corner of Elysian Fields and Filmore Avenue in a predominantly residential neighborhood of the City of New Orleans. It is a convenience store where food, liquor, and popular magazines are sold, including such sexually oriented magazines as "Playboy", "Penthouse", "National Screw", and "Oui". Before this prosecution defendant appeared before the City Council on a complaint by a neighborhood Catholic school that these and other sexually oriented magazines were on display in a conspicuous place at the center of his store in such a manner that school children could see and buy them. At the Council's suggestion these sexually oriented magazines were placed in a separate rack at the far end of the cashier's counter so that only the titles were visible, and the matter was dismissed.

Officer Rickey Bruce entered defendant's store on July 29, 1977 to investigate obscenity violations. From the book rack at the end of the cashier's counter he selected two magazines, "Climax" and "National Screw", issue of July 1977, which he purchased, paying $4.18 for both. After ascertaining that defendant was the owner of the store, Officer Bruce obtained an arrest warrant and Gambino was arrested. The magazine "National Screw", issue of July 1977, is the subject of this prosecution.

Assignments 1, 2, 3, 14, 15, 16 and 19 —Essentially these assignments question whether the magazine depicts "actual ultimate *1110 sexual acts or simulated or animated ultimate sexual acts" as set forth in Section F(1) of the Obscenity Act.

The Obscenity Act prohibits the arrest of any person for violating its provisions unless they have been afforded a prior adversary hearing at which the suspect has been made a defendant and the material has been found to be obscene. Section F(1) of the Act creates an exception to this prohibition permitting an arrest and prosecution without a prior adversary hearing when the obscene material shows "actual ultimate sexual acts or simulated or animated ultimate sexual acts when there is an explicit, close up depiction of human genital organs so as to give the appearance of consummation of ultimate sexual acts."

If this Court agrees with the jury that the four pictures in question in this magazine depict ultimate sexual acts with explicit, close-up depiction of human genital organs so as to give the appearance of consummation of ultimate sexual acts then the arrest and prosecution of defendant without a prior adversary hearing was not prohibited by law.

All four pictures are photographs of women engaged in acts of cunnilingus. At least three of the photographs depict the vaginas of participants. In one photograph there is an explicit, close-up depiction of a woman's vagina. All photographs give the appearance of the consummation of the ultimate sexual act of cunnilingus. In two of the photographs all of the subjects are nude; in another one of the female participants is partially clothed; and the other, a close-up photograph, only portrays the vagina of one participant and the tongue, mouth, face, head, hand and shoulder of the other.

In addition to the finding of the jury, the trial judge observed in his reasons for the sentence imposed that he had reviewed the magazine and in his opinion the photographs did depict ultimate sexual acts. He stated, moreover, that the magazine had no literary, artistic, political or scientific value. In fact, he declared, the publication was trash and should not be sold in New Orleans. To impose a lesser sentence, he held, would depreciate the nature of defendant's crime.

An argument is made by the defense that his conviction was erroneous because none of the photographs depict penetration, which he asserts is essential to an ultimate sex act. Reliance is placed upon the definition of rape to support this argument. Because no penetration is depicted, the defense argues, the photograph depicts only imminent lesbian activity, acts not considered obscene in Huffman v. United States, 163 U.S.App.D.C. 417, 502 F.2d 419 (1974). In the Huffman Case the material consisted of collections of photographs of two nude or near-nude females shown undressing, caressing, fondling and embracing each other. The photographs were accompanied by brief written material, including a trilingual statement purportedly addressed to "serious students of art."

Photographs at issue in the case at bar cannot be compared with the lesbian activity in the Huffman Case. Those at issue here are explicit, ultimate acts of deviate sexual conduct, not the remote foreplay found in Huffman. In the instant case the photographs depict activity which falls within the standard of hard-core sexual conduct formulated in Miller v. California, 513 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973). That standard permits regulation of "patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated."

Furthermore, the statutes on rape relied upon to support the defense contention that the conduct at issue here was not the ultimate sex act reprobated by the Obscenity Act are inapplicable. La.Rev.Stat. 14:41-41.1.[2] Those acts apply to rapes, both heterosexual *1111 and homosexual, involving vaginal and anal intercourse. Sexual acts prohibited by those statutes involving at least one man are unlike the deviant sexual acts at issue here involving only women. The rape statutes cited do not apply either factually or legally to the case at bar.

Thus in our independent review we agree with the jury, which is the repository of community standards in this case, that the photographs in question depict the "ultimate sexual acts" contemplated by Section F(1). Accordingly, the trial judge correctly denied defendant's motion to quash, motion to suppress, and motion for a prior hearing which are at issue in these assignments of error.

Assignment 18—Alternatively, the defense contends that the exception to a prior adversary hearing contained in Section F(1) of the Obscenity Act is invalid because the term "ultimate sexual acts" is unconstitutionally vague.

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362 So. 2d 1107, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-gambino-la-1978.