Lexplug logoLexplug

Hamling v. United States

Supreme Court of United States
418 U.S. 87 (1974)
ELI5:

Rule of Law:

In a federal obscenity prosecution, the 'contemporary community standards' for determining whether material is patently offensive are the standards of the community from which the jurors are drawn, not a hypothetical national standard. A conviction based on a jury instruction referencing a national standard is not automatically invalid if the error did not prejudice the defendant.


Facts:

  • William L. Hamling, Earl Kemp, Shirley R. Wright, David L. Thomas, and their corporations, Reed Enterprises, Inc. and Library Service, Inc., were involved in the publication and distribution of a book titled 'The Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography.'
  • To promote the book, the petitioners created and mass-mailed a single-sheet advertising brochure to approximately 55,000 people across the United States.
  • The brochure contained a collage of explicit photographs depicting heterosexual and homosexual intercourse, sodomy, masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality.
  • The mailing operation was complex, involving Academy Addressing and Mailing Service to prepare the envelopes and Regent House, Inc. to handle postage, with Reed Enterprises, Inc. ultimately paying for the services.
  • Individuals who responded to the brochure were sent copies of the Illustrated Report through the mail from a post office box in San Diego, California, managed by Library Service, Inc.

Procedural Posture:

  • William Hamling and others were indicted by a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California (trial court) for mailing obscene materials in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1461.
  • Following a jury trial, the petitioners were convicted on twelve counts related to the mailing of an obscene advertisement.
  • The jury was unable to reach a verdict on counts related to the book itself, and a mistrial was declared on those counts.
  • Petitioners (as appellants) appealed their convictions to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (intermediate appellate court).
  • The Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions.
  • While a petition for rehearing was pending, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Miller v. California, establishing a new test for obscenity.
  • The Court of Appeals reconsidered the case in light of Miller and again affirmed the convictions, after which the petitioners sought a writ of certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Locked

Premium Content

Subscribe to Lexplug to view the complete brief

You're viewing a preview with Rule of Law, Facts, and Procedural Posture

Issue:

Does a conviction under the federal obscenity statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1461, violate the First and Fifth Amendments where the jury was instructed to apply 'contemporary community standards of the nation as a whole,' in light of the subsequent Supreme Court decision in Miller v. California which permits the use of local community standards?


Opinions:

Majority - Mr. Justice Rehnquist

No, the conviction does not violate the First and Fifth Amendments. While the jury instruction referencing a 'national' standard was erroneous in light of Miller, reversal is only required if the error materially prejudiced the defendants. Here, the instruction to apply a broader, national standard was, if anything, more favorable to the defendants than a local one, and it is improbable that excising the national standard language would have affected the jury's deliberations. Furthermore, 18 U.S.C. § 1461 is not unconstitutionally vague because it is authoritatively construed to be limited to the type of 'hard-core' sexual conduct described in Miller, thus providing fair notice of the proscribed conduct.


Dissenting - Mr. Justice Douglas

Yes, the conviction violates the First Amendment. The brochure served as a visual glossary to an official government report on obscenity. If government officials may constitutionally report on the subject of obscenity, the First Amendment does not permit the suppression of a factual, visual illustration of what the report discusses, as the people have a right to know.


Dissenting - Mr. Justice Brennan

Yes, the conviction violates the First and Fifth Amendments. The federal statute is unconstitutionally overbroad as it aims to completely suppress sexually oriented materials. Even if the statute were constitutional, affirming the conviction is a patently indefensible denial of due process. The petitioners were tried and prepared their defense based on a 'national' standard, and the trial court explicitly excluded their evidence of local community standards. Affirming their conviction on the basis of a 'local' standard—a theory they were not allowed to address at trial—is fundamentally unfair and violates the principle of Saunders v. Shaw.



Analysis:

This case is significant for clarifying the application of the Miller v. California obscenity test to federal prosecutions. By rejecting the long-held 'national standard' for federal cases, the Court aligned federal law with the state-level approach, permitting juries to use local community standards. This creates a complex legal landscape for national distributors, who may be subject to prosecution in any federal district their materials enter, each with potentially different community standards. The decision also solidified the constitutionality of federal obscenity statutes by reading the Miller specifics into them, avoiding vagueness challenges while providing a framework for future prosecutions.

G

Gunnerbot

AI-powered case assistant

Loaded: Hamling v. United States (1974)

Try: "What was the holding?" or "Explain the dissent"