STAUNTON, VA — After Hours Video’s owner and a clerk may have to wait until late summer to begin their trials on obscenity charges. That’s the latest word from the prosecutor’s office, which on Tuesday said the court’s docket would need to be rearranged because the pre-paid vacations of two undercover investigators involved in the case could not.Last week, the court scheduled arguments to begin on June 17th, but this week Commonwealth Attorney Raymond C. Robertson said he can’t go to trial without the prosecution’s key witnesses.
“There’s no firm date set,” Robertson told the News Leader, adding that proceedings might begin in July or August. “That’s my best guess.”
Manassas, VA-based businessman Rick Krial, owner of After Hours Video, and Tinsley W. Embrey, a clerk at the store, were indicted on a total of 22 misdemeanor and felony obscenity counts related to the sale of 12 videos two weeks after the store opened in October 2007.
Friday was the last day for motions to be filed in the case, and defense attorneys Paul Cambria and Louis Sirkin made good use of it. Between them, they filed what a News Leader report called “a slew of motions” requesting, among other things, that the case be dismissed on the grounds Virginia’s obscenity statute is unconstitutional.
Robertson dismissed the dismissal motion as a ploy, saying Sirkin lost a similar argument on appeal before the Third Judicial Circuit — which covers Virginia — and the Supreme Court subsequently declined to hear the matter.
He also pooh-poohed a defense request that potential jurors be required to answer a questionnaire.
“It’s not done around here,” Robertson told the News Leader.
