PITTSFIELD, Mass. The state Appeals Court has upheld the conviction of a man who tossed pages ripped from a pornographic magazine from his car window while driving down a rural road.
Mark A. Rollins, 48, of Dalton, was convicted in 2000 in North Adams District Court of three counts of disseminating obscene material. He did not appeal an additional conviction on three counts of littering.

Rollins acknowledged throwing the explicit advertisements for pornographic videos from his car as he drove through the Berkshire town of Cheshire. But his lawyer, William Rota, argued that was insufficient to warrant the obscenity charge.

However, the judges said in their ruling Tuesday that women living along Stafford Road saw Rollins drive by their homes and toss out the materials three times over a two-week period as they were outside walking dogs or waiting with their children at a bus stop.

”This is not a situation in which a garbage bag fell from a truck en route to the dump and split open to reveal pornographic materials; nor is it a situation where such materials, abandoned deep in the outback, were discovered by adventurous hikers,” Judge James McHugh wrote in the court’s decision.

However, the judges overturned Rollins’ conviction on charges of disseminating matter harmful to a minor, saying none of the children waiting at the bus stop had seen the explicit material.

Rollins was sentenced to a suspended 18 month jail term on the charges and placed on probation until November 2006.