Indiana- It was a battle of the expert witnesses from California last week at a hearing in federal court on whether New Albany should be ordered to let an adult video store reopen.

After a full day of testimony in Indianapolis, U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker directed the two sides to submit their final arguments in writing this week and to respond to each others’ arguments by tomorrow so she can make a decision without delay – but she did not specify a date.

Lawyers for the city said they were pleased with the hearing.

“We feel we put on the best evidence,” said Scott Bergthold, a lawyer from Chattanooga, Tenn., who was representing New Albany. He said the city based its ordinances on rulings by federal appeals courts that upheld cities’ rights to regulate adult businesses.

New Albany DVD’s lawyer left before he could be interviewed.

During the hearing, the Rev. Marvin Cheek, pastor of Main Street United Methodist Church, and five other residents sat on one side of the courtroom. The church is diagonally across the street from New Albany DVD.

A similar number of New Albany DVD supporters sat on the other side of the courtroom.

“We wanted to support the effort getting this place moved,” said Cathy Prasad, a member of Main Street United Methodist.

“I grew up in the West End” of New Albany, not far from where New Albany DVD is located, Prasad said. When she heard about the adult video store, she said, “It made me feel like they were going to try to change the whole atmosphere of that part of the city.”

The store opened Feb. 19 even though a city building inspector had refused to conduct a final inspection of a recently completed remodeling, according to documents in the case.

That evening, the City Council imposed a six-month moratorium on the opening of any new adult businesses in town, and city officials ordered New Albany DVD to close.

A few days later, lawyers for the store filed suit in federal court, claiming their clients’ constitutional rights to freedom of expression were being violated.

City officials said they ordered the store closed because its operators had not complied with the city’s zoning and building-code requirements.

At a hearing in May, Barker ordered the city and the store’s operators to complete a zoning review.

In that review, the city denied the store the right to open, saying that it is too close to a church and to homes and violated adult-business and zoning ordinances enacted since February.

The store’s operators then requested another hearing, asking Barker to order the city to let the store open; they contended that the new adult ordinances are unconstitutional.

To be constitutional, Steve Mason, a lawyer for New Albany DVD argued, city ordinances regulating adult businesses more strictly than other businesses must be based on evidence that the adult businesses harm the neighborhoods around them – usually by causing decreased property values or increased crime.

Daniel Linz, a professor of social psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said at the hearing that New Albany had not based its ordinances on evidence about stores like New Albany DVD. Studies cited in the city’s ordinances are from different communities and include several kinds of adult businesses, Linz said, but not one like New Albany DVD.

He reviewed information about two video stores in New Albany that sell and rent large numbers of adult videos, along with nonadult videos, Linz said. He said there were fewer calls for help to the police from those video stores, which are most like New Albany DVD, than from other video stores offering only nonadult materials.

“I have concluded that the city has no reasonable basis for reliance” on other communities’ evidence, Linz said, “and it ignored the local evidence.”

Richard McCleary, a professor of environmental health, science and policy at the University of California at Irvine serving as New Albany’s expert witness, said studies of the harmful effects of adult businesses from other communities consistently show increased crime in the businesses’ neighborhoods. Thus it’s reasonable for New Albany to rely on them, he said. The studies include stores like New Albany DVD, he noted.

McCleary also questioned Linz’s methodology, saying criminologists rarely rely on information about police calls, because it doesn’t accurately represent crime.

McCleary said the video stores in New Albany that Linz cited aren’t comparable to New Albany DVD. In his estimate, 10 percent to 15 percent of their inventories are adult materials, McCleary said, adding that he doesn’t believe that they attract the kinds of clients and crime New Albany DVD would draw.

Private investigator Larry Borden, testifying as a witness for New Albany DVD, said on several occasions he visited the New Albany stores selling adult videos cited by Linz and he saw customers only in their adult sections.

Linz then testified that a study that the city cited and that McCleary claimed reflected stores like New Albany DVD wasn’t truly comparable because the stores had peep-show booths, which New Albany DVD won’t have.