In the latter case, decided in 1969, the Court unanimously ruled that the power to regulate obscenity "does not extend to mere possession by the individual in the privacy of his own home." Hence it is hard to see how Bee can be sent to prison for mere possession of those "incest comics."īee won't be raising a First Amendment challenge, however, because he gave up that right in exchange for dismissal of the child pornography charge, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.
But while the Court has upheld bans on possession (as opposed to production or distribution) of child pornography, it has rejected bans on possession of obscenity. California, which among other things involves a lack of "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." That is why prosecutors made a point of saying there was none of that in the drawings on Bee's computer. In contrast with child pornography, which is illegal even if it is not judged obscene, the material covered by the new law has to meet the obscenity test that the Supreme Court established in the 1973 case Miller v. This case is another example of how a constitutionally questionable law criminalizing mere possession of obscenity is escaping scrutiny.Ĭongress enacted the law criminalizing obscene depictions of sex acts involving minors after the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that a federal ban on "virtual" child pornography, production of which does not involve any real children, violated the First Amendment. Bee originally was indicted for receiving child pornography, based on a different set of images, but that charge was dropped as part of a plea deal. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri describes the material at issue as "a collection of electronic comics, entitled 'incest comics,'" that "contained multiple images of minors engaging in graphic sexual intercourse with adults and other minors." According to federal prosecutors, "The depictions clearly lack any literary, artistic, political or scientific value." Local police found the drawings on Bee's computer in August 2011 while executing a search warrant they obtained based on a tip from his wife. District Judge Dean Whipple sentenced Christjan Bee of Monett, Missouri, to three years in prison for "possessing an obscene image of the sexual abuse of children." The U.S.
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