BARTOW — The lawyer for Christopher Wilson, the Web site operator arrested in October on 301 obscenity charges, has filed a flurry of motions asking Circuit Judge Dale Durrance to dismiss the case.
Wilson was arrested by Polk County sheriff’s deputies because of a pornographic Web site that he ran while living in an apartment in Lakeland.
Lawyer Lawrence Walters [pictured right] filed motions saying that the case should be dismissed. He argued that:
Florida’s obscenity law is unconstitutional and is too vague.
The federal government, rather than the state, has jurisdiction over the Internet.
That when Polk County Judge Angela Cowden was shown pictures that were downloaded from the site, she was shown only a selection of pictures instead of being shown the entire Web site, and the obscenity statute requires that a work be considered “as a whole.”
Florida’s obscenity statutes violate the constitutional guarantee of right to due process and privacy.
Because obscenity is by law judged by “contemporary community standards,” Walters also filed a motion asking the judge to determine the nature and scope of the community whose standards should be applied in this case.
“With the advent of Internet communications, the determination of the relevant community in obscenity cases has become exponentially more difficult,” Walters said.
Florida’s obscenity statutes have already been challenged in Polk County in January 1988, when Circuit Judge Randolph Bentley ruled that the state’s obscenity statute was unconstitutional. The case involved the Varsity Theater, an adult movie theater that is now closed.
In April 1989, the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Lakeland reversed Bentley’s ruling and said Florida’s obscenity statute was indeed constitutional.
“That was the ’80s, this is now,” Walters said Monday. “There have been changes in technology, in societal norms, in human interaction. In the 1980s, gay sex was illegal. Two years ago the Supreme Court changed that.”
Walters said that the 1988 case was also different because it involved a movie theater physically located in Polk County, and Wilson’s case involves a Web site.
“The obscenity laws apply to many different types of media,” he said. “They can be unconstitutional in some cases and constitutional in others.”
Chip Thullbery, assistant to the state attorney in Polk County, said he had not seen the motions yet and could not comment on them in detail.
“We believe that our case is justified by the law and we will prevail on the motions to dismiss,” he said.
Wilson remains free on $151,000 bail. His next court date is a status hearing Jan. 6 followed by a pretrial hearing scheduled for Feb. 7. A trial date has not been set yet, Walters said.
No date has been set yet for the motions to be heard. They will be heard by Durrance, who will be the judge at Wilson’s trial.