Who can you rely on to provide a fair trial and a open, accessible venue to put forward your case without prejudice if not a Judge acting on behalf of the US Government? John Stagliano will find out as his trial gets underway, but not before a series of moves aimed to restrict Staglianos case and effectively tie his hands fimly behind his back in terms of what he can offer to defend and exonerate the indicted titles.
First of all, Judge Leon, is putting considerable effort in to limiting the access members of the public and press have to the case and/or materials in question. He has ordered that the indicted titles be removed from the public’s view therefore forbidding anyone else to provide their own theory of what they find socially acceptable. Judge Leon has also ordered that the jury selection questionnaire be kept from the public realm too and the fact that he has instructed a closed court smells of something Sinister – like his minds already made up and he just needs those jurers to agree with him.
Then there is the films, which the jury have been told they will not be expected to sit through all five and half hours of the indicted material but would be shown excerpts. This sounds awesome, lets take a sequence out of context and thrust it before someone, the only benefit not showing the films in their full and released length is to the prosecution who can use the shock value of this material that the jurors may or may not have seen before, hell they may not even know movies like Milk Nympho’s exist, to bring them down on the offensive sign… Wheras taking the piece as a whole would perhaps offer a more solid piece of work – and surely to determine the artistc merit of anything you need to see the whole work… Perhaps more than once.
If this wasn’t enough to give the prosecution a head start, Judge Leon’s decision to disallow testimonies from two of Stagliano’s expert witnesses on the basis that they would not provide enough Scientific merit surely indicates a completely biased way of conducting the case and tramples all over the American Constitution i once held with respect, it strikes me that since the events of 9/11 the US Government has thrown itself at anything it doesn’t like or agree with with all of it’s pollitical and flawed might, if not literal wars then metaphoric ones in the case of the ressurection of the so called war on porn! It sickens me and Barack Obama should be ashamed of himself, his colleagues in Government and his people for not having the bollocks to stand up in the face of this paticular wave of Oppression.
Given that with the internet, where these movies were purchased, the community guidelines should be relative to this technology and the vast distance it can cover… oh wait there aren’t any such guidelines because as always the Government is working to ambiguous and outdated legislation in their attempt to cripple the adult industry whilst crippling their democracy in the process.
It’s also worth pointing out, again, that the Miller Test is decades out of date and needs to be updated before it can be used to send a man to jail. One major part of the test is based on Community standards but as said above, given that the internet allows this industry, as well as the more mainstream ones, to appeal to a much wider community than was typical back when the Miller Test was developed surely indicates a complete overhaul is required… but of course the outdated law benefits the Government!
There isn’t much substance to this post – it is largely a rant about some of the frustrations i have had whilst following some of the case, I needed to vent and I thought I would whilst i still have the freedom to do so.
Source: Reason
