Ward v. Illinois

431 U.S. 767, 97 S. Ct. 2085, 52 L. Ed. 2d 738, 1977 U.S. LEXIS 106, 2 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1929

Opinions

Mr. Justice White

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The principal issue in this case is the validity of the Illinois obscenity statute, considered in light of Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15 (1973). There we reaffirmed numerous prior decisions declaring that “obscene material is unprotected by the First Amendment,” id., at 23; but acknowledging “the inherent dangers of undertaking to regulate any form of expression,” ibid., we recognized that official regulation must be limited to “works which depict or describe sexual conduct” and that such conduct “must be specifically defined by the applicable state law, as written or authoritatively construed.” Id., at 24. Basic guidelines for the trier of fact, along with more specific suggestions, were then offered:

“The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Kois v. Wisconsin, [408 U. S. 229,] 230 [(1972)], quoting Roth v. United States, [354 U. S. 476,] 489 [(1957)]; (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 value. We do not adopt as a constitutional standard the ‘utterly without redeeming social value’ test of Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U. S., at 419; that concept has never commanded the adherence of more than three Justices at one time. See supra, at 21. If a state law that regulates obscene material is thus limited, as written or construed, the First Amendment values applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment are adequately protected by the ultimate power of appellate courts to conduct an independent review of constitutional claims when necessary. See Kois v. Wisconsin, supra, at 232; Memoirs v. Massachusetts, supra, at 459-460 (Harlan, J., dissenting); Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U. S., at 204 (Harlan, J., dissenting); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 284-285 (1964); Roth v. United States, supra, at 497-498 (Harlan, J., concurring and dissenting).

“We emphasize that it is not our function to propose regulatory schemes for the States. That must await their concrete legislative efforts. It is possible, however, to give a few plain examples of what a state statute could define for regulation under part (b) of the standard announced in this opinion, supra:

“(a) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated.

“(b) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals.” Id., at 24-25. (Footnotes omitted.)

Illinois Rev. Stat., c. 38, § 11-20 (a)(1) (1975), forbids the sale of obscene matter. Section 11-20 (b) defines “obscene” as follows:

“A thing is obscene if, considered as a whole, its predominant appeal is to prurient interest, that is, a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex or excretion, and if it goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation of such matters. A thing is obscene even though the obscenity is latent, as in the case of undeveloped photographs.” ¹

In October 1971 appellant Ward was charged in the State of Illinois with having sold two obscene publications in violation of § 11-20 (a)(1). A jury was waived. At the bench trial the State’s evidence consisted solely of the two publications — “Bizarre World” and “Illustrated Case Histories, a Study of Sado-Masochism” — and the testimony of the police officer who purchased them in Ward’s store. Ward was found guilty, and in April 1972, he was sentenced to one day in jail and fined $200. His conviction was affirmed in the state appellate courts after this Court’s decision in Miller. The Illinois Supreme Court expressly rejected his challenge to the constitutionality of the Illinois obscenity statute for failure to conform to the standards of Miller, as well as a claim that the two publications were not obscene. 63 Ill. 2d 437, 349 N. E. 2d 47 (1976). Ward appealed, and we noted probable jurisdiction, 429 U. S. 1037 (1977), to resolve a conflict with a decision of a three-judge District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Eagle Books, Inc. v. Reinhard, 418 F. Supp. 345 (1976), appeal docketed, No. 76-366. We affirm.

As we read the questions presented by Ward,² they fairly subsume four issues. First, is the claim that Illinois has failed to comply with Miller’s requirement that the sexual conduct that may not be depicted in a patently offensive way must be “specifically defined by the applicable state law as written or authoritatively construed,” see supra, at 768, and that absent such compliance the Illinois law is unconstitutionally vague because it failed to give him notice that materials dealing with the kind of sexual conduct involved here could not legally be sold in the State. This claim is wholly without merit. As we shall see below, the State has complied with Miller, but even if this were not the case, appellant had ample guidance from the Illinois Supreme Court that his conduct did not conform to the Illinois law. Materials such as these, which by title or content may fairly be described as sado-masochistic, had been expressly held to violate the Illinois statute long before Miller and prior to the sales for which Ward was prosecuted.

In People v. Sikora, 32 Ill. 2d 260, 267-268, 204 N. E. 2d 768, 772-773 (1965), there are detailed recitations of the kind of sexual conduct depicted in the materials found to be obscene under the Illinois statute. These recitations included “sadism and masochism.” ³ See also People v. DeVilbiss, 41 , 242 N. E. 2d 761, 765 (1968); ⁴ cf. Chicago v. Geraci, 46 Ill. 2d 576, 582-583, 264 N. E. 2d 153, 157 (1970).⁵ The construction of the statute in Sikora gives detailed meaning to the Illinois law, is binding on us, and makes plain that § 11-20 reaches the kind of sexual materials which we now have before us. If Ward cannot be convicted for selling these materials, it is for other reasons and not because the Illinois statute is vague and gave him no notice that the statute purports to ban the kind of materials he sold. The statute is not vague as applied to Ward’s conduct.

Second, Ward appears to assert that sado-masochistic materials may not be constitutionally proscribed because they are not expressly included within the examples of the kinds of sexually explicit representations that Miller used to explicate the aspect of its obscenity definition dealing with patently offensive depictions of specifically defined sexual conduct. But those specifics were offered merely as “examples,” 413 U. S., at 25; and, as later pointed out in Hamling v. United States, 418 U. S. 87, 114 (1974), they “were not intended to be exhaustive.” Furthermore, there was no suggestion in Miller that we intended to extend constitutional protection to the kind of flagellatory materials that were among those held obscene in Mishkin v. New York, 383 U. S. 502, 505-510 (1966). If the Mishkin publications remain unprotected, surely those before us today deal with a category of sexual conduct which, if obscenely described, may be proscribed by state law.

The third claim is simply that these materials are not obscene when examined under the three-part test of Miller. This argument is also foreclosed by Mishkin v. New York, supra, which came down the same day as Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U. S. 413 (1966), and which employed the obscenity criteria announced by the latter case. See Marks v. United States, 430 U. S. 188, 194 (1977). The courts below examined the materials and found them obscene under the Illinois statute, which, as we shall see, infra, at 774-776, conforms to the standards set out in Miller, except that it retains the stricter Memoirs formulation of the “redeeming social value” factor. We have found no reason to differ with the Illinois courts.

Fourth, even assuming that the Illinois statute had been construed to overcome the vagueness challenge in this case and even assuming that the materials at issue here are not protected under Miller, there remains the claim that Illinois has failed to conform to the Miller requirement that a state obscenity law, as written or authoritatively construed, must state specifically the kinds of sexual conduct the description or representation of which the State intends to proscribe by its obscenity law. If Illinois has not complied with this requirement, its statute is arguably overbroad, unconstitutional on its face, and an invalid predicate for Ward’s conviction.

As we see it, Illinois has not failed to comply with Miller, and its statute is not overbroad. People v. Ridens, 51 Ill. 2d 410, 282 N. E. 2d 691 (1972), vacated and remanded, 413 U. S. 912 (1973), involved a conviction under this same Illinois obscenity law. It was pending on our docket when our judgment and opinion in Miller issued. We vacated the Ridens judgment and remanded the case for further consideration in the light of Miller. On remand, the Illinois Supreme Court explained that originally § 11-20 had provided the tests for obscenity found in Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476 (1957), and that it subsequently had been construed to incorporate the tripartite standard found in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, supra, including the requirement that the materials prohibited be “utterly without redeeming social value.” People v. Ridens, 59 Ill. 2d 362, 321 N. E. 2d 264 (1974). The Illinois court then proceeded to “construe section 11-20 of the Criminal Code ... to incorporate parts (a) and (b) of the Miller standards,” id., at 373, 321 N. E. 2d, at 270, but to retain the “utterly without redeeming social value” standard of Memoirs in preference to the more relaxed criterion contained in part (c) of the Miller guidelines. Ridens’ conviction was affirmed, and we denied certiorari.⁶ 421 U. S. 993 (1975).

Because the Illinois court did not go further and expressly describe the kinds of sexual conduct intended to be referred to under part (b) of the Miller guidelines, the issue is whether the Illinois obscenity law is open-ended and overbroad. As we understand the Illinois Supreme Court, however, the statute is not vulnerable in this respect. That court expressly incorporated into the statute part (b) of the guidelines, which requires inquiry “whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law.” 413 U. S., at 24. The Illinois court thus must have been aware of the need for specificity and of the Miller Court's examples explaining the reach of part (b). See id., at 25. The Illinois court plainly intended to conform the Illinois law to part (b) of Miller, and there is no reason to doubt that, in incorporating the guideline as part of the law, the Illinois court intended as well to adopt the Miller examples, which gave substantive meaning to part (b) by indicating the kinds of materials within its reach. The alternative reading of the decision would lead us to the untenable conclusion that the Illinois Supreme Court chose to create a fatal flaw in its statute by refusing to take cognizance of the specificity requirement set down in Miller.

Furthermore, in a later case, People v. Gould, 60 Ill. 2d 159, 324 N. E. 2d 412 (1975), the Illinois Supreme Court quoted at length from Miller v. California, including the entire passage set out at the beginning of this opinion, supra, at 768-770 — a passage that contains the explanatory examples as well as the guidelines. It then stated that Ridens had construed the Illinois statute to include parts (a) and (b) of the Miller guidelines, and it expressly referred to the standards set out in the immediately preceding quotation from Miller. 60 Ill. 2d, at 164-165, 324 N. E. 2d, at 415. Because the quotation contained not only part (b) but the examples given to explain that part, it would be a needlessly technical and wholly unwarranted reading of the Illinois opinions to conclude that the state court did not adopt these explanatory examples as well as the guidelines themselves.

It might be argued that, whether or not the Illinois court adopted the Miller examples as part of its law, § 11-20 nevertheless remains overbroad because the State has not provided an exhaustive list of the sexual conduct the patently offensive description of which may be held obscene under the statute. We agree with the Illinois Supreme Court, however, that “in order that a statute be held overbroad the overbreadth 'must not only be real, but substantial as well, judged in relation to the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep.’ (Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601, 615 . . . .)” People v. Ridens, supra, at 372, 321 N. E. 2d, at 269. Since it is plain enough from its prior cases and from its response to Miller that the Illinois court recognizes the limitations on the kinds of sexual conduct which may not be represented or depicted under the obscenity laws, we cannot hold the Illinois statute to be unconstitutionally overbroad.

Given that Illinois has adopted Miller’s explanatory examples, what the State has done in attempting to bring its statute in conformity with Miller is surely as much as this Court did in its post-Miller construction of federal obscenity statutes. In Hamling v. United States, 418 U. S., at 114, we construed 18 U. S. C. § 1461, which prohibits the mailing of obscene matter, to be limited to “the sort of” patently offensive representations or descriptions of that specific hardcore sexual conduct given as examples in Miller. We have also indicated our approval of an identical approach with respect to the companion provisions of 18 U. S. C. § 1462, which prohibits importation or transportation of obscene matter. See United States v. 12 200-Ft. Reels of Film, 413 U. S. 123, 130 n. 7 (1973).

Finding ail four of Ward’s claims to be without merit, we affirm the judgment of the Illinois Supreme Court.

So ordered.

1 Section 11-20 (c) provides:

“(c) Interpretation of Evidence.

“Obscenity shall be judged with reference to ordinary adults, except that it shall be judged with reference to children or other specially susceptible audiences if it appears from the character of the material or the circumstances of its dissemination to be specially designed for or directed to such an audience,”

2 The questions presented in Ward’s Jurisdictional Statement 3 are (1) whether the provisions of § 11-20, “on its face and as construed by the Illinois Supreme Court, are vague, indefinite, overbroad and uncertain, in violation of the free speech and press and due process provisions of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States”; and (2) whether “the publications, ‘Bizarre World’ and ‘Illustrated Case Histories, a Study of Sado-Masochism’ are constitutionally protected, as a matter of law.”

3 The Illinois Supreme Court described the materials as follows, 32 Ill. 2d, at 267-268, 204 N. E. 2d, at 772-773:

“ ‘Lust Campus’ by Andrew Shaw is a story of sexual adventures on a college campus 'where even members of the faculty taught sin and evil.’ The book describes homosexuals 'necking’ on a public beach; mutual masturbation; self-fondling; a circle of persons engaged in oral-genital contact; rape; intercourse; lesbian intercourse; cunnilingus and flagellation; flagellation with barbed wire; an abortion with red-hot barbed wire; masturbation with a mirror reflection, and a transvestite episode.

“ 'Passion Bride’ by John Dexter described curricular and extracurricular sexual episodes that take place during a honeymoon on the French Riviera. The book describes masturbation; intercourse; a party between an old man and three prostitutes; attempted intercourse in a bath; lesbian foreplay; flagellation; rape ending in the death of the female from a broken back and intercourse ending in the broken back of the male participant.

“ 'Crossroads of Lust’ by Andrew Shaw describes the sexual adventures of various persons in a small town. There are numerous descriptions of intercourse; lesbian intercourse; oral-genital contact; and rape. A woman stabs a man in the course of intercourse, completing the act after he is dead. There are also three voyeurism scenes, two of which involve watching lesbian love play. The third is characterized by sadism and masochism.”

4 This case involved a local ordinance that the Illinois Supreme Court described as identical to the state statute. The court described the materials at issue:

“The books are replete with accounts of homosexual acts, masturbation, flagellation, oral-genital acts, rape, voyeurism, masochism and sadism. These accounts can only appeal to the prurient interest, and clearly go beyond customary limits of candor in the kinds of conduct described and in the detail of description.” 41 Ill. 2d, at 142, 242 N. E. 2d, at 765.

5 The materials under scrutiny — also under a local ordinance — were described by the court:

“The author’s accounts of normal and abnormal sexual conduct, including sodomy, flagellation, masturbation, oral-genital contact, anal intercourse, lesbianism, and sadism and masochism, are vivid, intimately detailed, and explicit. (Cf. One, Inc. v. Olesen (1958), 355 U. S. 371 . . .)” 46 Ill. 2d, at 582-583, 264 N. E. 2d, at 157.

6 Four Justices dissented, but waived the Rule of Four — that, if at least four Justices so request, the Court will give plenary consideration to a particular case. 421 U. S., at 994 n.