More fun from that wacky old Texas.
Jesus Castillo, a comic books store employee who sold an adult comic book, from the adult section, to an adult undercover cop, has been found guilt on an obscenity charge...because comics are for kids, you know. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail, a year probation, and a $4,000 fine, and all appeals to the Texas and US Supreme Courts have been denied.
CBLDF Chief Legal Counsel Burton Joseph said: “One thing is clear, with every defeat of the First Amendment, the censors gain courage to pursue their unconstitutional ends. The Castillo case is among the most appalling cases of injustice ever to come to the attention of CBLDF. Conservative communities are quick to condemn comic book artists and publishers without an understanding that they enjoy the full panoply of First Amendment rights.”
Exactly.
I also note that, as is usually the case in obscenity cases, it was a lowly clerk that was charged, and not the store owners.
There's a huge amount of misinformation floating around out there about this case, and I'm afraid you've been rather badly misinformed.
Mr. Castillo did no jail timem and this case has zero precedential value.
I have a long blog about this at http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2003/08/im_very_close_t.html.
But the short version is:
(1) If anything, the Dallas Court of Appeals' opinion establishes that comics are subject to all the same constitutional protections as other publications. All the spin about the damage this case does to the First Amendment protection for comics is complete crap.
(2) Out-of-state folks did no favors for Mr. Castillo in elevating this case to a grudge-match with the Dallas County DA involved.
(3) It's a shame that the lawyer CBLDF paid, by failing to renew a pretrial objection, let the prosecutor get away with some mischief that probably did make the jury think this case was about selling explicit materials to kids. But that's not a basis for international outrage.
(4) Take heart that the prosecutor thought that in order to win, she had to confuse the jury into thinking that the case WAS about kids. Even in a very conservative place like Dallas, in other words, the prosecutor had to cheat to win a conviction.