Over at Bitter’s place (here’s the permalink), she’s found a story from my/our neck of the woods. The gist of it is the local D.A. is prosecuting the owner of an adult video store for selling adult videos.
The Staunton grand jury indicted a Manassas man and his company Thursday on 16 felony obscenity charges concerning adult videos that were sold in October at After Hours Video, according to Staunton Prosecutor Raymond C. Robertson.
The six-person grand jury spent Thursday morning viewing parts of 12 videos bought at the Springhill Road video store from Oct. 15 to Oct. 18. It was the second time the grand jury convened within the last month.
Krial, the owner of 12 adult businesses in Virginia and Maryland, said in the past he has caught flak from communities but has never been criminally charged in connection with video sales. He labeled the Staunton indictments as “ludicrous.” Asked to elaborate, Krial said, “It is what it is. Everybody’s going to have their day in court.”
The opening of Krial’s Staunton business on Oct. 7 has spawned the Citizens’ Task Force Against Pornography and also generated a petition drive supporting After Hours Video. Thursday night, Krial said more than 800 people had signed the petition that’s being circulated at the Springhill Road store.
Rick Hudson, a free-speech expert and an attorney with the First Amendment Center in Nashville, said Robertson will have a tough time making the obscenity charges stick.
“They’re fairly hard to prove,” he said. “It has to be something really out of the ordinary.”
The story doesn’t mention the names of the videos, and I probably wouldn’t print them either. I do have some sympathy for the community if they don’t want the stores in their area (and with 800+ signatures, sounds like there’s a decent grassroots effort there), but these are just your garden variety porn, I think it’s going to be a hard case for the prosecutor to win.
Cam, are you reading that 800 number as being people opposed to the porn store? It looks more like those 800 support the store.
Woody
Now hear this, now hear this… Ron Paul has raised 4.2 million dollars in 24 hours!!!
That is all!
Whoops, you’re right Woody. 800 people in support of the porn store. I stand corrected.
What’s up with people trying to get rid of things they don’t like? To these people, I say, “Deal with it,” because there’ll always be one thing or another that one group or another would like to get rid of. If we got rid of everything that every group wanted, there’d probably be nothing left for anyone to enjoy. That means no more shooting, no more private viewing of porn, no more driving trucks and SUV’s; no more kids playing in their backyards; no more middle-of-the-street football games; no more mowing the lawn with loud mowers; no more smoking, no more drinking (and you all know how well THAT worked), and so on and so forth. Whatever happened to “America - Land of the Free; Home of the Brave?” I say get rid of all the anti’s so the rest of us can enjoy this great country in peace.
“The six-person grand jury spent Thursday morning viewing parts of 12 videos bought at the Springhill Road video store from Oct. 15 to Oct. 18. It was the second time the grand jury convened within the last month.”
OMG!! So many jokes in there. “Yes your Honor, I’m sure that was porn. I made sure of it, I had to watch them there videos twice, and some of the 3 or 4 times jest to make sure….”
I wonder when the grand jury is getting together again for the next viewing. I should start volunteering for grand jury duty more often.