PITTSBURGH, PA — Extreme Associates owners Rob Black and Lizzie Borden on Wednesday each pleaded guilty to a single felony count of conspiracy to distribute obscenity, thereby putting an end to a federal case that has dogged the couple and their company for nearly six years.The couple also surrendered the domain name ExtremeAssociates.com.
Black and Borden, who in real life are married couple Robert Zicari, 35, and Janet Romano, 32, declined to comment after their pleas, but both the prosecution and defense said the decision lowered their exposure to prison time and fines sought under the government’s 10-count indictment. According to a U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson, the couple agreed to the plea arrangement after prosecutors promised not to calculate how much Extreme Associates, which has gone out of business since the indictments, earned from sales of the indicted material.
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, the lead prosecutor in the case, characterized the scenes of simulated rape, murder, sado-masochistic abuse and explicit sexual acts involving performers portraying child-like characters as indisputably obscene.
“We knew that this was the right case to bring from the day we brought it,” she said. “The materials produced by Extreme Associates were so far across the line between pornography and obscenity, we believe any jurisdiction across the country would have found the materials obscene.”
According to their defense attorney, Zicari and Romano plan to contest, for purposes of sentencing, the contention that simulated sadomasochism is obscene.
Zicari is well-known inside and outside the adult industry for his over-the-top Rob Black persona, which people who know him say was an act he adopted for marketing reasons. The Black character and Extreme Associates were subjects of a documentary that aired on PBS’s Frontline, just before Zicari, Romano and Extreme Associates were charged.
“Ultimately, you’ll get to see the real Rob Black when we come back for sentencing,” defense lead H. Louis Sirkin told The Associated Press. “Rob’s a very sweet man.”
The Extreme Associates case has been an odyssey of epic proportions since it began its journey through the courts, and many adult-industry insiders felt it represented a sort of banner for the conservative Bush administration’s domineering morality crusade. A perceived federal campaign against sexuality in all its forms was seen inside the adult industry as payback for a groundswell of support from the religious right for former President George W. Bush and his Republican cohorts, who rode a tide of ultra-conservative social sentiment to dominance in the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. federal government and many state governments for eight years.
Zicari, Romano and Extreme Associates were indicted in August 2003. In October 2005, U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster dismissed the charges on First Amendment right-to-privacy grounds. The government appealed, and in December 2005, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the charges, ruling that U.S. Supreme Court decisions established obscenity is not shielded by the First Amendment, even in individuals’ homes.
The case lay fallow until mid-2008, when a court clerk discovered expected hearings never had been scheduled. Following a predictable media ruckus, the oversight was corrected.
Zicari and Romano, both of Northridge, Calif., remained defiant throughout the process, decrying government persecution of adult material and vowing to fight to the bitter end. Their guilty pleas came as something of a surprise to the adult industry.
Sirkin told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that sentencing talks began a month ago.
“Concessions from both sides made it in the best interests of all parties [for Zicari and Romano to plead guilty],” he said. “This has gone on for a very, very long time. Everybody wants to get on with their lives.”
Sirkin said he plans to seek prison terms of 10-16 months for each defendant, half of which could be served in a halfway house. Buchanan said she will seek prison sentences of 27-33 months plus fines of $250,000 and post-release probation of five years per person. The maximum penalty under federal sentencing guidelines is 60 months in prison or a fine of as much as $250,000 or both for Zicari and Romano, plus a fine of up to $500,000 and five years’ probation for their company.
Lancaster, the judge who dismissed the case in 2005 and then accepted Zicari’s and Romano’s guilty please, is set to begin sentencing hearings at 9:30 am ET July 1st.
