United States v. Sandy

605 F.2d 210
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJuly 27, 1979
DocketNos. 77-5367 to 77-5371
StatusPublished
Cited by24 cases

This text of 605 F.2d 210 (United States v. Sandy) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Sandy, 605 F.2d 210 (6th Cir. 1979).

Opinion

ENGEL, Circuit Judge.

Appellants were convicted in a non-jury trial of conspiring to distribute an obscene [212]*212film, “School Girl”, in interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 1462 (1976). Their principal claim in this appeal is that they were prejudiced because the case was tried under the obscenity standards of Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973), only to be decided later by the trial judge under preMiller standards.

We hold upon the record before us that there was no prejudice which affected the substantial rights of the appellants and, finding no other error in the trial, affirm the convictions.

The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Memphis, Tennessee, on February 15, 1973, charged 25 individuals and organizations with conspiring to distribute “School Girl” in interstate commerce. The detailed allegations of the indictment and the overt acts expressly incorporated in it described activity which commenced with the production of the motion picture by certain of the conspirators, the sale of the rights in the movie to the defendant Sherpix for a total of $41,000, and the subsequent distribution for public exhibition of the film throughout the country by means of the various services offered by the remaining named defendants. The conspiracy charge, which was embraced in count 1 of the indictment, was fortified by five additional counts in which certain of the conspirators were charged with the substantive offenses of shipping the film in interstate commerce by use of a common carrier, contrary to 18 U.S.C. §§ 1462 and 2.

Of the 25 defendants charged in the conspiracy count, 15 waived jury and elected to be tried before the district judge. Seven other defendants, including all who were tried on the substantive charges, proceeded to trial by jury immediately following the non-jury trial of the appellants involved here.1

All of the defendants who insisted upon their right to jury trial were acquitted on the conspiracy count but were found guilty of the several substantive offenses charged against them.2 Conversely in the non-jury trial before District Judge Robert M. McRae, Jr., three defendants were acquitted and the remaining twelve were convicted, eight of whom have appealed here.

I.

In the non-jury trial held January 5-6, 1976, District Judge Robert M. McRae, obedient to our circuit’s decision in United States v. Marks, 520 F.2d 913 (6th Cir. 1975) (Marks I), considered that his determination of the issue of obscenity was to be governed by the standards set forth in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973), although all events alleged in the indictment occurred before Miller was decided. However, after the trial of the case but before filing his decision and entering judgment, the district judge learned that the Supreme Court had granted certiorari in Marks, supra, and accordingly delayed further proceedings in the case until the appeal was decided. On March 1,1977, the Supreme Court held that persons indicted for conduct occurring before Miller were entitled to all of the benefits which Miller might confer, but were also entitled to application of the pre-existing Roth-Memoirs3 test of obscenity, which primarily provided that materials could not be found to be obscene unless they were “utterly without redeeming social value.” Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 196-97, 97 S.Ct. 990, 51 L.Ed.2d 260 (1977) (Marks II). On July 28,1977, approximately five months after the Supreme Court’s [213]*213decision in Marks II, Judge McRae filed his findings of fact and conclusions of law. Applying both the Miller and Roth-Memoirs tests,4 he adjudged the film to be obscene and found the appellants guilty.

As noted in Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87, 99, 94 S.Ct. 2887, 41 L.Ed.2d 590 (1974), the definition of obscenity announced in Roth was substantially refined by the plurality opinion in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413, 86 S.Ct. 975, 16 L.Ed.2d 1 (1966). To fall outside constitutional protection under Memoirs, “it must be established that (a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex; (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters; and (c) the material is utterly without redeeming social value.” 383 U.S. at 418, 86 S.Ct. at 977.

Miller v. California, supra, revised the Roth-Memoirs test determining obscenity in the following language:

(a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest
• • • t
(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific values.

Miller v. California, supra, 413 U.S. at 24, 93 S.Ct. at 2615. The standards announced in Miller were made applicable to federal obscenity trials in United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film, 413 U.S. 123, 129-30 & n. 7, 93 S.Ct. 2665, 37 L.Ed.2d 500 (1973).

No appellant has disputed the trial judge’s factual description of the content of “School Girl”:

The school girl portrayed in the movie is a college student who undertakes to research a sex subculture. In order to do this she responds to certain classified ads in the college underground newspaper. This leads to a series of sexual episodes which include having sexual intercourse with a husband under the wife’s direction and ultimate participation as a third party, mutual masturbation pursuant to direction from a man over the telephone, sexual intercourse oral and otherwise with a father and son team, and a group sex orgy. In addition, there are episodes in which complete actual and prolonged sexual intercourse between the school girl and her boyfriend is shown. There is a similar episode portrayed between the school girl’s female roommate and the school girl’s male professor who called at their apartment to inquire about the welfare of the school girl.

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Bluebook (online)
605 F.2d 210, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-sandy-ca6-1979.