PENSACOLA, FL — Florida’s Assistant State Attorney, Russ Edgar, has it out for the state’s pornographers and wants to turn those currently in his grasp into object lessons designed to strike fear in the hearts of others like them. Yesterday, Circuit Court Judge Ron Swanson let both prosecuting attorney Edgar and defense attorney JeromeMooney know the rules of engagement, community standards-wise.Although attorney Lawrence Walters had argued that national standards should be applied in matters related to the internet, Swanson chose to narrow the focus to Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, and Walton counties – regardless of whether members of those counties have ever visited the website of Clinton Raymond McCowen, aka Ray Guhn.
Guhn, as well as business partner Kevin Patrick Stevens and Andrew Kevin Craft, William Lee Beach, Jane Marie Dreka, and Thomas W. Dwyer are each charged with two counts each of racketeering, conducting a criminal enterprise, fraud, making or promoting obscene performances, and prostitution in a case likely to make precedent. Guhn also faces charges of money laundering.
At issue is the production of erotic videos shot in Santa Rosa and Escambia counties before being made available online to CumOnHerFace.com site subscribers by Guhn’s company, Global Technologies Inc. and the Cash Titans affiliate program.
Stevens served as programmer and content producer for the site, while Craft worked as its general manager.
If convicted, each could serve up to 30 years in prison and pay a $10,000 fine.
According to Edgar, the case in a first in the United States, given its wide range of charges, including its insistence that performance in a commercially produced erotic production amounts to prostitution. While that issue was laid to rest by the so-called “Freeman decision” in the state of California, it is unresolved in other states, although some, including Texas, have passed local laws preventing there from becoming a legal distinction between explicit sexual performances and prostitution.
Guhn’s supposed crimes allegedly took place within his Navarre home, five hotels in Escambia County, other homes, and various non-residential or lodging related areas, and involved as many as 100 local men and woman who participated in group sex for pay. Female stars received up to $1,000 for their roles and male stars were paid $400, with $300 payments being made for participation in private parties associated with auditions. Edgar states that the site generated more than $1 million per year in sales and was in operation for five years prior to the arrests.
Escambia County Sheriff Ron McNesby, whose office launched the investigation after receiving complaints, takes the matter seriously, warning readers of the Pensacola News Journal that “We want people to know that we don’t want this kind of activity in our community.”
In order to make the busts, police sent an undercover officer to audition as a model. The officer was allegedly told that Ray Guhn Productions had been working in the area for five yeas and had recruited more than 100 women during that time. Said officer was then supposedly asked to bring back friends who would like to perform sexually in front of a camera. A three-week jury trial is expected to begin on May 5th, 2008.
