Judge Grants Acquittal Motion in Porn Case, Calls Evidence ‘Woefully Insufficient’
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has directed an acquittal in the pornography prosecution of an adult video producer known for depicting fetishes.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said the evidence was “woefully insufficient” to link video producer John Stagliano and two corporate defendants to the production and distribution of two videos deemed obscene by the government, the Washington Post reports. Leon dismissed the charges on Friday.
“I hope the government will learn a lesson from its experience,” Leon said.
The videos were called “Jay Sin’s Milk Nymphos” and “Joey Silvera’s Storm Squirters 2,”Main Justice reports.
The defendants were represented by California solo Allan Gelbard; H. Louis Sirkin of Cincinnati’s Sirkin, Kinsley & Nazzarine; Paul Cambria Jr. of Buffalo’s Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria; and Robert Corn-Revere of Davis Wright Tremaine, the National Law Journal reports.
Robert Richards, co-director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Penn State University, told the Post that the case, brought in 2008, came at “the tail end of Bush administration obscenity prosecutions.”
