STAUNTON, VA — The potential for pornography to addict the local populace is one of the reasons a prosecutor said the court should deny a defense motion for dismissal of the obscenity charges against an adult-store owner and one of his employees.Staunton, VA, Prosecutor Raymond C. Robertson told the court people can become “addicted to this kind of thing,” thereby contributing to all sorts of societal ills.
“There is no pregnancy in pornography and there is no venereal disease,” he wrote in his brief. “However, those who attempt to model what they see in these films will surely experience, to some degree, unwanted pregnancies and venereal diseases, including AIDS. The core of our social fabric, which revolves around monogamy and family life, becomes shattered by the advocacy of sex with multiple partners…”
Robertson was referring to 12 DVDs purchased from After Hours Video during an undercover operation last October. Weeks later, owner Rick Krial and his company were charged with 16 felonies and eight misdemeanors, all revolving around the alleged obscenity of the material. In January, a clerk at the store also was charged with six felony obscenity counts.
Motion hearings will convene Wednesday in Staunton Circuit Court before Judge Thomas H. Wood. The trial — which Robertson previously has said may be broken into multiple parts because of the number of charges — is scheduled to begin in August.
The defense contends the charges violate “constitutional due process guarantees. [The] fundamental right to sexual privacy should encompass the right not only to possess allegedly obscene materials,” but also to sell them, they aver.
Defense attorneys — including Louis Sirkin and Paul Cambria Jr. — also are concerned there may have been “irregularities” in the conduct of the special grand jury convened to hear the initial complaint. According to a motion now before the court, the charges should be dismissed if the grand jury was not shown the films in their entirety. Only by taking the works as a whole can probable cause for obscenity prosecution be determined, they contend.
In addition, the defense wants the court not to allow trial jurors to be made aware that the U.S. Department of Justice has loaned the prosecution an attorney who specializes in obscenity prosecutions at the federal level.
