Obscenity Prosecution Tells a Sad Story

Posted By Cliff Tuttle | August 9, 2008

Posted by Cliff Tuttle

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog commented on a Western Pennsylvania Federal Prosecution this past week. From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette account linked to the blog, Karen Fletcher of Donora in Washington County, didn’t sound much like a predatory internet child pornographer. She sounded like a writer. She wrote stories on a for-members-only internet website called “Red Rose Stories” involving brutal sexual crimes against children. Fletcher said she originally wrote them as self-therapy for memories of an abused childhood.

Fletcher plead guilty and received five years probation, with the first six months to be served under house arrest. In her plea agreement, Fletcher admitted that the specified writings in “The Red Rose” were obscene under the test adopted by the United States Supreme Court:

“The defendant, Karen Fletcher, agrees that each of the six
stories (which underlie Counts One through Six of the Indictment),
when each is considered as a separate work, satisfies the following
test for obscenity enunciated in Miller v. United States, 413 U.S.
15, 24 (1973) :
1. An average person, applying contemporary community
standards, would find that the material taken as a whole
appeals to the prurient interest;
2. An average person, applying contemporary community
standards, would find that the material depicts or
describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and
3. A reasonable person would find, taking the material as a
whole, that it lacks serious literary, artistic,
political or scientific value.
The defendant, Karen Fletcher, also acknowledges that the six
charged stories are not the only material, posted to the red-rosestories
web site, which meets the test for obscenity.”

Nevertheless, the arguments made by the prosecution, as reported in the WSJ Law Blog, sound like a case that might have once been made against the writings of D. H. Lawrence or James Joyce. Of course, we will probably never know whether Fletcher’s works had any literary merit. We can’t read them.

Had Fletcher been willing to face the possibility of a serious jail sentence, would she have prevailed, either at trial or on appeal, under the First Amendment? We will never know the answer to that question either. To read the Wall Street Journal Law Blog comment: Click here.

Welcome

CLIFF TUTTLE has been a Pennsylvania lawyer for over 45 years and (inter alia) is a real estate litigator and legal writer. The posts in this blog are intended to provide general information about legal topics of interest to lawyers and consumers with a Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania focus. However, this information does not constitute legal advice and there is no lawyer-client relationship created when you read this blog. You are encouraged to leave comments but be aware that posted comments can be read by others. If you wish to contact me in privacy, please use the Contact Form located immediately below this message. I will reply promptly and in strict confidence.

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