STAUNTON, VA — After Hours shop owner Rick Krial and his defense attorneys have decided that they’re not taking his recent obscenity convictions lying down. Citing a collection of what they deem to be “improper statements” made during the four-day trial, they have filed a 29-page paper protesting Krial’s dual convictions.Insisting that the statements were made for the sole purpose of whipping up the “passions and prejudices of jurors,” the legal team contends that improper evidence was also allowed to be introduced during the August trial, influencing jurors to reach conclusions which Krial and his advisers believe were unsupported by sufficient evidence.
Krial and a cashier found themselves on the business end of obscenity charges in October 2007, when undercover Staunton and Waynesboro police officers, as well as plainclothes officers from the Virginia State Police pretended to be customers purchasing erotic DVDs. A special grand jury was convened and indicted Krial and his company on 16 felonies and eight misdemeanors. The cashier also received accusations of obscenity violations, but was found not guilty by the jury.
Attorneys for Krial state in their filing that they believe Staunton prosecutor Raymond C. Robertson sent out a “call to action” to jurors during both his opening and closing arguments. When the prosecutor had described After Hours as “a serious community problem a mere three minutes into trial time, he was met with objections from the Paul Cambria-led defense team. Like all later requests for a mistrial, this one was denied by Circuit Judge Thomas H. Wood.
Among comments that attorney’s object to is one made by Robertson during closing arguments, during which he said “… you know what I can’t run naked down Beverley Street or why I can’t have incest? Because communities and states and the nation have a right to make laws that protect the decency and the morality of their people.”
Also mentioned was an observation on Robertson’s part that Staunton’s citizens “are not Las Vegas. We are not New York City. We are not even Baltimore.”
According to the filing, “The Commonwealth’s attorney repeatedly implored the jury to prevent Staunton from becoming like other places. In doing so, he relied upon numerous facts that were not in evidence, such as the lack of immorality in Staunton and the causal connection between observing sexual material and behavior.”
In a statement likely to shock victims of violent crime, Robertson concluded his argument by assuring jurors that “You’ve never seen anything immoral in Staunton until this store came in here.”
Additionally, defense was unimpressed by Mary Anne Layden’s testimony. Layden is billed as an expert witness in human sexual psychology, as well as the director of education at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, Layden incorrectly testified that one of the selected DVDs featured a sexually immature female performer. Given that this moved the conversation away from obscenity and into the realm of underage sexual performances, which is a federal matter and not one at issue in the case – and because Judge Wood had instructed the court that the ages of performers would not be made an issue — Krial’s attorney’s repeatedly objected to the testimony while unsuccessfully calling for a mistrial.
Prosecution also asked jurors to imagine how they would feel if their children or grandchildren viewed the videos in question, again confusing the issue by suggesting After Hours promoted the viewing of explicit materials by minors – again in spite of Wood’s specific directions that “The standard in this case is not what is suitable for children.”
Krial was fined $1,000 and no jail time, while his shop received a $1,500 fine, after jurors agreed that sex scenes between one man and one woman were not obscene, but that group sex scenes were.
