commlawfinal.txt

• Confessions the defendant made
• Defendant’s performance on a test
• Defendant’s past criminal record
• Questioning the credibility of witnesses
• Defendant’s character, associates or personality
• Inflaming the public mood against the defendant
• Published before a trial and suggest the defendant is guilty

• free of deep impressions and beliefs that will not yield to evidence presented during trial
• not totally ignorant of facts involved
• cannot hold such a fixed opinion they couldn't judge impartially guilt of the defendant

• Voir dire - jurors questioned and removed if bias found
• Change of venue - moved to county where publicity low
• Change of veniremen - jury imported from distant community
• Continuance - trial postponed
• Admonition - judge order to decide verdict based only on facts presented in court
• Sequestration - jury denied access to media and personal communication

attorney convinces court there is reason a potential jury member should not hear case

limited number of challenges granted without need to prove cause for removal of a jury member

• Judge order (“gag orders”) to stop those involved in a case from making public comments
• Limit what parties can say, when they can sit, and to whom they can speak
• Issued to plaintiff and defendant, attorneys, press, or jury
• must be a clear and present danger to the defendant’s rights

• Must be intense and pervasive publicity about the case
• No other alternative might mitigate effects of pretrial publicity
• Restrictive order will effectively prevent prejudicial publicity form reaching jurors

• Restrictive orders aimed at press has decreased during past three decades
• More likely in high profile cases
• Law still developing

• Miller test leaves flexibility for interpretation
• New technologies made adult content readily available
• Feminists say pornography objectifies women; conservatives say it harms family values
• Questioning how many resources government should use to prosecute content involving consensual adults
• Dealing with sexually explicit materials that don't meet the Miller test

• narrow class of material defined by Supreme Court in Miller test
• not protected by the First Amendment

• Sexually graphic
• referred to as adult or sexually explicit material protected under First Amendment
• May be barred in works available to children or radio and tv

• term has no legal significance
• often used by laypersons and politicians

1815

1821

1873

work is obscene if it has a tendency to deprave and corrupt minds open to such immoral influences

• Dominant theme of material taken as a whole must appeal to the prurient interest in sex
• material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards
• material is utterly without redeeming social value

• using contemporary local community standards, the work, as a whole, appeals to prurient interest
• work depicts in a patently offensive way sexual conduct specifically defined by state law
• work lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value

• “state standards”
• becoming more difficult to identify in era of the Internet

• Only hard core sexual materials meet this requirement
• “Representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated,” and “representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of genitals”

• constitutional to ban sale of material to kids that is legally distributed to adults
• Laws restricting access to indecent material on the Internet have been largely unsuccessful

• not protected by the First Amendment
• Images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct don't need to be obscene to fall outside protection

• barred sale and distribution of any images that “appear” to depict minors performing sexually explicit acts
• In 2002 SC ruled important segments of this law violated the 1st ammend. bc CPAA “prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims in its production.”

• aimed at curbing promotion of child pornography
• In 2006 federal appellate court found the act unconstitutionally overbroad and void for vagueness

• guilty knowledge
• whether defendant was knowledgeable about contents before sold, published, or distributed

• No government agency more diligent in policing obscenity than Postal Service
• 1873 Comstock Act provides the basic authority for the Postal Service to regulate flow of erotic material in mail
• postal patrons may request to block delivery of solicitations for adult material or other obscene publications

• not granted First Amendment protection until 1957
• historically, significant censorship of motion pictures by local community censorship boards
• today local censorship of films is infrequent as adult theaters have almost disappeared

• Zoning regulations
• Expressive conduct regulations

• community cannot completely bar or reduce number of adult bookstores, movie theaters or newsstands
• must be justified by showing it furthers a substantial state interest
• must be narrowly drawn so not to restrict more speech than necessary

• courts have allowed cities to adopt minimal clothing requirements in adult clubs
• allowed to adopt rules designed to prevent sexual conduct and contact
• must serve a substantial interest unrelated to the content of speech
• must be narrowly tailored to serve the interest

• Made it a crime to transmit indecent material over public computer networks
• SC ruled act unconstitutional in 1997

• Prohibits commercial Web sites from transmitting to minors material harmful to them
• Lower courts ruled law unconstitutional as it restricted adults
• In 2002, SC overturned ruling, but suggested other aspects of law could be constitutionally flawed
• In 2003, U.S. Court of Appeals again ruled law unconstitutional
• In 2004, SC gave second opinion saying the law likely violates the First Amendment
• In 2007, a federal district court issued a permanent injunction against the enforcement of COPA

• Requires public libraries to install anti-pornography filters on all computers with Internet to receive federal funding
• Lower courts ruled the statue un-constitutional
• In 2003, SC overturned decision ruling libraries could constitutionally restrict children’s access to pornography

• In March 2007, ICANN rejected proposal to shield minors from sexual conduct online by creating sexually explicit Internet domain
• The adult industry did not support proposal, because it would have created a virtual ghetto of nonobscene speech