CHATSWORTH, CA — June came in like a lion for JM Productions, its principal, Mike Norton, Five Star Video, and its principals, Christopher Ankeney and Kenneth Graham. According to an order from U.S. District Magistrate Edward C. Voss, all of those individuals and entities will soon be going deep inside of the lion’s den.If Voss gets his way, the time of official entry will be first thing in the morning on July 18th and the location will be Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt’s United States District Court room in Phoenix, Arizona, which Five Star Video calls home.
Voss’s indictment accuses the group of a number of obscenity related crimes, including selling American Bukkake 13, Gag Factor 15 and 18, and Filthy Things 6, which it contends qualify as obscene materials, and shipping them via United States Postal Service and the internet to North Virginia. Precisely what all of the charges are is still uncertain since three counts have not been identified.
As free speech attorney Eric Bernstein points out, the choice of venue is unusual given that in the federal case against Extreme Associates, the indictment was made in Pittsburgh, where content was received. In the case of JM Productions and Five Star Video, the indictment was in Phoenix, AZ. According to Bernstein, this “would lead one to believe that they think they’re going to have a more sympathetic jury in Arizona than they’re going to have in northern Virginia.”
Bernstein, who is not representing any of the clients in this case, observes that “It really is unfortunate that we are going to continue to have these periodic attacks on free speech and an attempt at censorship. The government hasn’t learned that it ought to stick to making one mistake and, instead, keeps on making multiple mistakes instead.”
One of those mistakes, according to Bernstein, has been the selections of venue chosen by the Feds for its legal battles. “They’re going to keep picking and choosing, which is wonderful so long as they win one. They haven’t won any, so this theory of picking and choosing only runs contrary to their own interests.”
Bernstein thinks that the reason behind this second big attempt at an obscenity conviction relates to the government’s desire for “a test case, one they can take all the way to the Supreme Court, which will determine what community standards are. I don’t think the Supreme Court wants to determine what community standards are right now. The court is, with three weeks to go, taking on fewer cases than its taken on in a generation”
Attorneys Jeffrey J. Douglas, H. Louis Sirkin, Richard Hertzberg, and Allan B. Gelbard, Esq., who are legal council for the accused, appear to agree with Bernstein, saying in a prepared statement that “All those charged and their lawyers are confident of acquittal and a complete repudiation of this abuse of Federal power.”
The statement, released on Monday, revealed few new facts but strongly condemned the actions of the government and called into question their motivations, which they described as a “misallocation of scare resources to try to galvanize its extremist voting base.”
The statement further observes that “Obscenity is the only Federal crime for which there is no definition. No one knows whether a film is “obscene” until a jury convicts the sellers of a serious felony. Although the government has guidelines which defines with precision which sexual acts the government considers obscene to depict, the government keeps these guidelines secret. In other words, obscenity is a crime but the government keeps the definition of that crime a secret. If convicted, the victims of this censorship effort face years in prison classified as a sex offender and forfeiture of virtually everything they have earned, purchased and saved.”
The attorneys agree that these indictments are particularly inappropriate during a time of war and fear of terrorism, pointing out that “Somehow President Bush believes that it should be a crime to distribute photographs of sexual acts which are perfectly lawful to engage in.” They conclude by asking the rhetorical question, “How much safer do you feel? Knowing that this is where F.B.I. agents, Justice Department lawyers, Assistant U.S. Attorneys and Federal Court resources are being expended, do you think bank robbers, embezzlers, drug dealers and terrorists feel more or less vulnerable?”
Further complicating matters for the government, in Bernstein’s opinion, is the fact that “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of enthusiasm from the people authorized to enforce this to do just that. In an era of terrorism, in an era of violent crime, filled with drugs, a certain aspect of the civil government is more worried about people’s sex and what they do or what they watch behind the privacy of their own bedroom and their own computer room, than they are about children bringing guns to schools and that terrorists are still threatening this country on a daily basis.”
Shoppers at the FiveStarDVD.com site will find no JM Productions titles.
