Encore Post: Obscenity Prosecution Tells a Sad Story

Posted By Cliff Tuttle | February 20, 2010

TO CELEBRATE OUR NEW LOOK, WE ARE REPRISING SOME OF THE BEST POSTS OF THE PAST 18 MONTHS ON PITTSBURGH LEGAL BACK TALK.  THIS POST DREW MANY COMMENTS, INCLUDING NUMEROUS ROBOTIC COMMENTS.

FIRST POSTED ON AUGUST 19, 2008.

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.

THEN, IN JULY 2009 WE FOLLOWED UP ON THE STORY, WHICH HAD CONTINUED TO DRAW COMMENTS.

Last August, I wrote a post entitled “Obscenity Prosecution Tells a Sad Story.”It is about a woman who wrote stories involving child sexual molestation and posted them on a website known as “Red Rose”, which required a membership fee of $10.00. A summary of the facts appears in a Wikipedia profile of Mary Beth Buchanan, the US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, which featured the Fletcher case as one of her most controversial prosecutions.

Since then, this post has drawn hundreds of comments. The overwhelming majority were obvious robotic comments, often with embedded links to porno sites. Many others simply stated that it was a good post, but made no substantive comment. They have been increasing in frequency and I have been noticing that more of them seem to be coming from real people, rather than robots.

Today, a member of a social web site (Wolfbook) appears to have sent links to the story to his friends and some of them are sending me messages. Whereas, I had been deleting all comments on this story, I’ve decided to start posting comments that are substantive and not selling something.

After re-reading “Obscenity Prosecution Tells a Sad Story”, I think that the topic is worth revisiting. Moreover, it has been made timely by the accusations of overzealous prosecution by Buchanan’s office that have lately been voiced from many quarters.

Thank you, Wolfbook members, for your compliments on the post, but I’d really like to hear what you (or anyone else) has to say about the outcome of this case.

Back Talk Requested.

CLT

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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