Establishment of a procedure for police and prosecutors to follow when seizing alleged pornographic material is the most significant aspect of yesterday’s Hawaii Supreme Court ruling on pornography, according to attorney Evan Shirley.
Shirley successfully argued before the state high court that when police and prosecutors want to seize as evidence films or books they consider pornographic, a prompt hearing is required in which a judge determines if the material is obscene.
The court’s unanimous decision sets guidelines on when and how the hearing is to be conducted.
A U.S. Supreme Court decision requires the hearings to be conducted, but Hawaii did not have any provision for the hearings before yesterday’s decision.
The decision also said that suppression of the evidence is the only relevant sanction in this case because of the violations of First Amendment rights.
Shirley said he considered this portion of the decision more important than a finding that part of Hawaii’s pornography law is unconstitutional.
Associate Justice Edward Nakamura, who wrote the decision, ruled unconstitutional the law that says a person charged with promoting pornography is presumed to have knowledge of the contents of the material he is selling or distribution. For example, a clerk in a bookstore is presumed under the law to know that a book he is selling is pornographic.
Nakamura said the law might “tend to limit public access to protected material because booksellers may then restrict what they offer to works they are familiar with and consider “safe.’ …
Deputy city prosecutor Art Ross, who argued the prosecution case on appeal, said he “welcomed” the guidelines laid down in the “well-written” decision.
He said he did not think the portion of the law declared invalid would “bring down the whole system” for pursuing charges against pornographers.
“It may kill a few other cases, but for future reference, it’s a good learning experience for us,” Ross said of the guidelines.
“With the kinks out, maybe we can give pornographers a better run for their money than we have,” Ross said.
Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
