Hamling v. United States

The Court first held that the evidence supported the jury's finding of obscenity under the then-governing Memoirs test: the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appealed to prurient interests; it was patently offensive under contemporary standards; and it was utterly without redeeming social value. The jury had the brochure itself before it and was not required to accept either side's expert testimony about its character.

The jury's inability to agree on whether the Illustrated Report was obscene did not establish that the Report was protected, because a hung jury is not an acquittal or a finding of nonobscenity. In any event, the brochure was a separate item that had to be judged on its own. An advertisement can itself be obscene even if the material it advertises is not.

Because the convictions were not final when Miller was decided, petitioners could invoke constitutional changes from Miller that worked in their favor. But Miller's replacement of Memoirs' demanding "utterly without redeeming social value" requirement with a less protective serious-value inquiry did not benefit defendants who had already been convicted under the more defendant-favorable Memoirs instruction.

Miller rejected a constitutional requirement that juries apply a hypothetical, uniform national standard. The relevant inquiry is what an average person, applying contemporary community standards, would conclude. A juror may draw on knowledge of the community or vicinage from which the juror comes, just as jurors may draw on common experience in applying other legal standards.

The Court construed § 1461 to incorporate the Miller contemporary-community-standards test. Since this case was tried in the Southern District of California, the jurors could properly rely on the standards of that federal judicial district, although a trial court could admit evidence concerning standards elsewhere if it would assist the jury.

The court's repeated references to standards of the nation as a whole described too broad a geographic area under Miller. But the instructions, considered as a whole, correctly directed jurors not to apply their individual preferences or the views of unusually sensitive persons. Reversal was warranted only if removing the national-standard language probably would have materially affected deliberations, and the Court found no such probability on this record.

The Court also found no reversible error in excluding a local survey offered by petitioners. Trial courts have broad discretion over expert and survey evidence, and petitioners had been allowed to present extensive testimony about community standards, including testimony concerning materials available in San Diego.

Roth had already rejected a vagueness challenge to § 1461, explaining that criminal statutes need not achieve impossible precision if their terms provide reasonably definite warning when measured by common understanding and practice. The statute's terms, as limited by the constitutional definition of obscenity, supplied that warning.

Miller did not invalidate preexisting obscenity statutes merely because they used general terms such as "obscene" or "lewd." Rather, Miller required that statutes, either by their text or authoritative judicial construction, be confined to specifically defined hard-core sexual conduct that may constitutionally be proscribed.

Following its approach in United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film, the Court construed § 1461 to reach only patently offensive representations or descriptions of the hard-core sexual conduct exemplified in Miller. The brochure's explicit depictions fell plainly within that category, so petitioners could not plausibly claim inadequate notice or an unforeseeable retroactive enlargement of the statute.

An indictment is sufficient when it contains the elements of the offense, fairly informs the accused of the charge to be defended, and permits the accused to plead a conviction or acquittal as a bar to a later prosecution for the same offense. Ordinarily, statutory language is enough when it directly and expressly sets out the offense's elements.

Unlike the fact-specific defect in Russell v. United States, obscenity is a legal term of art with an established legal meaning. The Government therefore did not have to plead each component of the constitutional obscenity definition in the indictment, particularly where the indictment identified the allegedly obscene material and the charged mailings.

The Court followed Rosen v. United States and held that the offense is complete when a defendant knowingly mails material that is in fact obscene while knowing its contents and character. A defendant's personal belief that the material is legally nonobscene is irrelevant, because requiring proof of legal knowledge would allow distributors to avoid liability through ignorance or claimed misunderstanding of the law.

Smith v. California requires some scienter in obscenity cases to prevent self-censorship of protected expression, but it does not require awareness of the material's ultimate legal status. Knowledge of contents and character adequately satisfies the constitutional concern and the statute's knowing-use requirement.

The record permitted the jury to find that the individual petitioners, as officers and active participants in the relevant corporations, knew about the mass-mailing scheme and the brochure's contents. Their coordinated roles in arranging the advertising, postage, post-office box, printing, and sales operations also supported the conspiracy conviction.

The availability of similar magazines or films in bookstores or on newsstands does not by itself establish that the charged material is nonobscene. At most, it shows that other people have distributed similar matter; it does not make those materials reliable proof of community acceptance or legal nonobscenity.

A second-class mailing privilege creates no presumption that a publication is nonobscene, because postal rules governing that privilege do not authorize postal censorship. Likewise, a prior judicial finding that a different film or magazine was nonobscene did not make it automatically relevant to the brochure in this case.

The court allowed petitioners to use expert testimony to address community standards. It could reasonably exclude the physical materials as cumulative, confusing, or likely to overwhelm the jury with collateral comparisons.

Under Mishkin v. New York, when material is designed for and primarily distributed to a clearly defined deviant sexual group, its prurient appeal may be assessed by reference to that group's sexual interests. The instruction properly allowed the jury to consider both appeal to the average person and appeal to identified deviant groups represented by portions of the materials.

The pandering instruction did not make pandering a separate, uncharged offense. Consistent with Ginzburg v. United States, the jury could consider the manner of production, advertising, distribution, sale, and editorial intent as relevant evidence in deciding whether the material itself was obscene under the governing test.

Rule 30 requires that, on request, counsel be given an opportunity to object to instructions outside the jury's presence. The trial judge should have granted petitioners' request after the charge, particularly because the court did not clearly assure counsel that objections could be made after the jury retired.

Rule 52(a), however, directs courts to disregard errors that do not affect substantial rights. The Court rejected an automatic-reversal rule for every Rule 30 violation and instead required an inquiry into prejudice.

The record did not show prejudice. The bench discussion concerned legal issues, followed earlier discussions of proposed instructions, and gave no indication that the jury heard it or perceived counsel as improperly antagonistic toward the judge.

The Court assumed without deciding that young adults could constitute a cognizable group for jury-selection purposes. Even under that assumption, petitioners failed to establish a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination.

The jury wheel had not been refreshed for nearly four years, so newly eligible younger voters were not yet included. But Congress may permit periodic rather than continuous updating of jury wheels to accommodate practical administrative needs. The aging of a nondiscriminatory wheel does not itself become purposeful discrimination merely because newly registered voters have become eligible after the wheel was filled.

Because the record showed no prohibited systematic exclusion, the District Court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to delay trial until a new jury wheel was created.

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 24(a) gives district courts substantial discretion to conduct voir dire and to decide which party-proposed questions to use. The court asked numerous questions, including general questions concerning jurors' views about obscenity, and otherwise examined the panel sufficiently to assess impartiality and competence.

The Constitution sometimes requires inquiry into racial prejudice when the case presents that danger, but it does not require separate questioning about every possible source of bias. The requested questions about education, politics, and religion were not constitutionally compelled, and their omission did not show an abuse of discretion.