STAUNTON, VA — Tomorrow morning, seven jurors will be selected for what is likely to be an important community standards trial – and part of Staunton, OH prosecutor Raymond C. Robertson’s promise to keep pornography out of the city’s retail shops. Last October, Rick Krial’s After Hours Video opened for business – and was promptly visited by plainclothes officers from the Virginia State Police, as well as undercover agents from both Staunton and Waynesboro police departments, all keen to find evidence of obscenity. The collective pretended to be customers and purchased 12 DVDs. A few weeks later, Krial and one of his cashiers, found themselves accused of multiple felonies and misdemeanor charges of obscenity.
Not content to force the shop’s owner and his business, LSP of Virginia, into court with 16 felony and eight misdemeanor charges, Robertson insisted that filing six felony and four misdemeanor charges against cash register wielding employee Tinsley W. Embrey the following January was necessary for justice to be properly served.
Jury selection will begin at 9:30 am in Staunton Circuit Court on Tuesday for an expected four-day trial concerning the misdemeanor charges. If Robertson manages to secure convictions, then the Commonwealth can move forward with its felony charges.
With competent defendants and some of the best legal counsel available via attorneys Paul Cambria Jr. and Louis Sirkin, the case will not provide Robertson with the slam dunk recently experienced by the Feds during the Red Rose Stories prosecution.
Robertson will receive assistance from U.S. Department of Justice obscenity attorney Matthew Buzzelli.
Jury selection is expected to last as long as two days and will be able to draw from a pool of 35 potential jurors on Tuesday and another 25 on Wednesday. Once seated, the seven will determine whether the video products sold by Embrey in Krail’s store fail to meet the so-called “Miller test,” which asks three questions: 1) Does application of community stands find that the work appeals to the prurient interest of viewers, 2) Is the work patently offensive sexual behavior defined by state law, and 3) When taken as a whole, does the work lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
