Facts
- Billy Jenkins managed a movie theater in Albany, Georgia.
- Jenkins exhibited the film Carnal Knowledge, a commercially released motion picture with sexual themes and some nudity.
- Georgia prosecuted Jenkins under its obscenity statute for distributing obscene material by showing the film.
- A jury convicted Jenkins; he received a fine and a probationary sentence.
- The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the conviction by a 4–3 vote.
- While Jenkins’s case was on direct review, the Supreme Court decided Miller v. California (1973), revising the constitutional test for obscenity.
Issues
- Whether a defendant whose obscenity conviction was on direct review when Miller was decided is entitled to the benefit of the Miller standards.
- Whether the Constitution requires a jury instruction specifying a statewide “community standard” in state obscenity prosecutions.
- Whether Carnal Knowledge could constitutionally be found obscene under the First and Fourteenth Amendments applying Miller.
Decision
- The Court reversed the judgment affirming Jenkins’s conviction.
- Because the case was on direct review when Miller was decided, Jenkins was entitled to any benefit available under Miller.
- The Court held that a jury may be instructed to apply “community standards” without being told to use a hypothetical statewide standard.
- After independently reviewing the film, the Court concluded it did not depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and did not portray the kind of “hard core” sexual conduct that may be constitutionally prohibited.
- Justices Douglas and Brennan filed separate concurrences in the result.
Legal Principles
- When an obscenity conviction is still on direct review at the time a new constitutional obscenity standard is announced, the defendant may claim the benefit of that standard.
- The Constitution does not require that juries in state obscenity cases be instructed to apply a statewide community standard; a general “community standards” instruction may be sufficient.
- Miller does not grant juries unlimited discretion; appellate courts have an independent constitutional duty to determine whether material falls within the unprotected category of “hard core” sexual conduct.
- Nudity and sexual themes, without patently offensive depiction of hard core sexual conduct, are insufficient to render a work legally obscene under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Conclusion
The Court applied Miller on direct review, rejected a constitutional requirement for a statewide community-standards instruction, and held that Carnal Knowledge was not obscene because it lacked patently offensive depictions of hard core sexual conduct, requiring reversal of Jenkins’s conviction.