The Christopher Handley obscenity prosecution made the news a few months ago, but Lawrence A. Stanley’s article at ComiPress is the first to really go into depth about why Handley was prosecuted and why the rest of us should care. (Warning: Images may be NSFW.)
The facts are laid out in the CLBDF summary of the case: Handley, a manga collector, received a package of manga from Japan. The local postmaster determined some of the contents were obscene, alerted authorities, and got a search warrant, then closed up the package again and allowed the unsuspecting Handley to pick it up. The police pulled Handley over after he left the post office, followed him home, and seized his entire collection of books, magazines, and DVDs. Out of thousands of items, they found no child pornography, but they did find 150 to 300 images (not books—images) that could be judged obscene.
As the ComiPress article explains, possession of child pornography is a crime, but possession of obscene materials for one’s own use, in one’s own home, is not. From Stanley V. Georgia:
Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulating obscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one’s own home. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.
(Emphasis added by Lawrence Stanley)
So why is Handley still being prosecuted? Becase the judge in his case made this leap of logic:
Thus, while an individual has a limited right to possess obscene materials in the privacy of his own home, there exists no right to … possess obscene materials that have been moved in interstate commerce….”
Here is the chilling part: Handley is preparing to plead guilty.
This case is frightening on a number of levels: The eagerness of state and federal authorities to invade someone’s privacy for a victimless crime (remember, we’re talking about drawings here), the disregard of the constitutional rights to privacy and freedom of speech, and the government’s treatment of Handley, which reads like something out of a dystopian novel. To stay out of jail while awaiting trial, he had to agree to turn over the contents of his computer to the government, allow unannounced visits from government agents and searches of his computer, and undergo periodic drug testing. His pre-trial officer tried to have him jailed after learning that Handley was visiting anime sites (including Anime News Network, which I link to pretty much every day) and had looked at, among other things, material relating to The Gothic and Lolita Bible (a fashion book wtih adult models).
As a result of the report, the district court prohibited Handley “from viewing or accessing anime on the Internet,” from “ordering anime video and written material,” or from “engag[ing] in Internet chat.” … Finally, Handley was ordered to “participate in mental health counseling with a licensed mental health therapist of his choice” and to authorize the therapist to inform on him if s/he determines that Handley “is a danger to himself or others.”
Remember, Handley has not been tried and is still presumed innocent.
The intrusiveness of state and federal authorities in this case is truly startling, as is the fact that this man is facing serious prison time (7 to 9 years) for a handful of drawn images.
Don’t underestimate this last point. Stanley starts the article with an account of a less sympathetic case, a guy who was dumb enough to use a public computer (in a job center) to view drawings of children having sex with adults. The guy already had a child pornography conviction, and he was rather vigorously prosecuted.
Most people, myself included, find child pornography distasteful. However, there is a crucial distinction between photographs of children having sex, which necessarily involve exploitation of children, and drawings, which do not. Prohibiting the possession of such drawings, Stanley argues, is a violation of the First Amendment; the government is not allowed to regulate what people think. This earlier prosecution opened the door to the Handley case, and Stanley points out that the category of prosecutable material has been expanding. First they came for the sleazy guy down the street with the nasty images on his computer, but if the trend continues, could I be in danger for owning a copy of Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby? Or for that matter, Air Gear? The Handley case is chilling evidence that the slope is already pretty slippery.
[...] at MangaBlog, Brigid Alverson considers the chilling implications: “This case is frightening on a number of levels: The eagerness of state and federal [...]
Scary stuff, especially when it easily hits home with so many of us. While I’ve tried to keep up on this case, I hadn’t heard some of these specific details until now. Wow.
I hope everyone who comes to this site reads this article and Mr. Stanley’s article closely. There is no one here this doesn’t apply to. Truly chilling.
“There is no one here this doesn’t apply to” …except us in countries without equivalent laws against “obscenity”.
But I’m rooting for Mr. Handley, liberty and common sense.
The guilty plea is very surprising, since I’m under the impression that one of the conditions for CBLDF’s involvement in any first amendment-related case is that the defendant must not plead guilty…
Fascism.
I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that outrage accomplishes nothing. only action makes a difference.
If you have not recently or ever contributed to the CBLDF, I hope you will do so. Also, if you have a state representative who is not a vile creature (some of us do not) please write them and express your intelligently, politely worded disgust at the mockery of justice that this is.
Brigid is right – there are none of us that are not at risk here. Manga is simply not drawn with this kind of thing in mind. The social mores expressed are different, the worldview and cultural views are different and, as a result there are few, if any, manga and anime fans who are not at risk for *something* in their collection being misinterpreted by an overzealous zealot.
Cheers,
Erica
If they ban the “interstate commerce” of such materials, what will this mean for online book retailers that sell yaoi? Or does “state” in that case mean commerce between nations?
I suspect it means any “transportation” of good over any boarders. So if the book/dvd or whatever was produced outside your state (in whichever sense the judge at hand decides) then is shipped to you in exchange for funds, you can wind up in trouble; most troubling is that this appears to be *retroactive* to the rest of a collection.
I think this prosecution is a reasonable attempt to curtail behaviors (in this case the viewing or drawing of kiddie porn) that have at least a plausible connection to serious crimes like molestation. Frankly, I would be more worried if he *weren’t* getting counseling.
B. Mac, the images in question weren’t child pornography, although it seems some of them may have involved characters under 18. It’s hard to say.
If this were a huge collection of child pornography, I would say some investigation into his other activities to see if counseling is in order might be warranted. But that’s not what’s going on. The images in question were isolated instances in a huge collection—out of 1,200 magazines and “hundreds” of books and DVDs, they found 150 to 300 images that were worthy of prosecution. I would say that ratio probably holds true in my own collection. I don’t like pornography, and I don’t collect it, but these images come up from time to time in manga I like to read, and sometimes I get a book without realizing what’s inside. If I were to be prosecuted on that basis, I would need counseling too—rage counseling, because it’s so patently unfair.
One of the frustrating things about this case is the lack of context. It sounds like Handley was targeted almost at random and that he’s not a child molester even a porn collector. Maybe that’s not the case. If so, that would change my mind about some of the details of the case, but not the basic principle: Everyone, even pedophilic porn freaks, is entitled to basic Constitutional rights.
[...] facts and implications of the government’s prosecution of Dwight Whorley over lolicon manga. Brigid Alverson has further [...]
[...] Brigid Alverson offers additional commentary. [ComiPress, MangaBlog] [...]
Dany, to quote a better man than me, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Simon, the CBLDF is acting in an advisory capacity only, not actually as the defense. See this interview with Charles Brownstein, Executive Director of the CBLDF.
Brigid – From what I understand from talking to Chris there are only 7 pages of material that the prosecution is siding a good chunk of the case on.
The reason that *I* think he was singled out – he is from a small town of slightly over 5000 people and probably one of a handful of people who even know what anime is. The community is extremely conservative and when a person gets several shipments from some odd place (in their eyes) like Japan it definitely makes them wonder whats going on.
Wow! If that’s the case, that’s a very scary scenario—if he was singled out simply for being different, then anyone is vulnerable. Funny, I thought Iowa was more progressive than that, but I guess there’s a lot of variation on the local level.
First, and foremost, why was the postmaster looking at the contents of someone’s private mail?
If anything, someone should be investigating why this happened. Perhaps I am ignorant of the powers granted to a postmaster, but it seems logical that one of those powers is certainly NOT “sole judge of what is or is not obscene”.
This is insane.
The Judge’s reasoning is devoid of any logic and common sense.
I think he should be be the one to “participate in mental health counseling with a licensed mental health therapist of his choice”
Because I’d be very worried to live in a country that allows people like that to be judge.
But Luckily I don’t. I hope.
It sounds to me like someone watched to much footloose before his daily delivery route started.
[...] The always excellent Brigid Alverson writes her own clear-headed, thoughtful and easy-to-digest take on that essay. [...]
I agree with tris. Why was the postmaster opening his private mail? Sounds like he has a case against the postmaster no matter how his case ends up.
I wouldn’t say i’m surprised by the guilty plea. He pleaded guilty instead of being found guilty by a jury of his peers. If he was “found guilty” then this case would be huge, it would set a precedent that could be used in later court cases. But since it never actually went to court that is not the case. I will say I am a little disturbed about all this though. After listening to the podcast on Anime World Order about all this, and hearing the details, it seems absolutely absurd that he is going to go to jail for owning a COMIC BOOK. They said in the podcast that the reason he really couldn’t pursue this further was he couldn’t afford it. He already had to shell out $200k … I dunno this just seems a little to insane for me. To think that this guy is going to go to jail for buying a manga blows my mind. I don’t care what was in it, it’s not even real, it’s a drawing ffs. I’m not saying what was depicted in the drawings was right, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that at the end of the day, its still just lines on a piece of paper. I am really curious to see how a jury would react to a case like this though. Could they look past what was in the pictures to the rights of the person? I can’t really say. I would think that someone who has never seen doujinshi/hentai and never been exposed to it might just be completely shocked by it, so much so that they would make the judgement of guilty solely based on what they saw.