Pornography Trial Ordered : Four Days of Viewing Films Persuades Judge

The black-haired woman peered out from the television screen. “I know what you’re going to say,” her videotaped voice purred. “Strange, strange. But perverted? I don’t think so.”

Judge Patricia Cowett, seated at her bench Thursday in San Diego Municipal Court, gave no sign what she thought about the X-rated video, “Perversion,” as it played back episode after episode that lived up to its title and left little to the imagination.

For Cowett, it was the fourth and last day of a movie marathon that might have wearied the most indefatigable cinephile. In a courtroom empty but for an occasional visitor, the judge and her bailiff had watched since Monday nearly 20 hours of porn--the central evidence in the preliminary hearing of Donald Wiener, an adult bookstore owner charged with distributing obscene matter.

The names of the videos, seized by sheriff’s detectives in September from Wiener’s stores in Lemon Grove and National City, pretty much tell the story of what Cowett and Deputy Marshal Edward Skubiak spent the week viewing.

There were “The Taming of Rebecca,” “Kneel Before Me” and “Oriental Techniques in Pain and Pleasure.” There were “The Damnation of Tammy,” “Teenage Cycle Sluts” and “Exquisite Agony.” Those were the tapes prosecutors had offered as evidence.

At the request of the defense, Cowett also watched “The Piercing of Laura,” “Revenge,” “Lesbian Orgy,” “Femmes de Sade,” “Journey Into Pain,” “Dr. Bizarro” and, of course, “Perversion.”

Throughout, by all accounts, Cowett maintained a poker-faced detachment. On Thursday morning, with the filmfest winding down, she scribbled notes on a yellow pad, removed her glasses, rubbed her eyes, sipped from a coffee mug and appeared to yawn--even as the players on the video monitor reached points of acute self-absorption.

The object of the exercise was to evaluate Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Stahl’s contention that some of the videos available at Wiener’s stores are obscene.

The six films offered as evidence by the prosecution depict sexual acts in a way that “exceeds what the general community standard would allow as being explicit,” Stahl said in a hearing

Thursday afternoon. Earlier, Stahl said the films are distinct from non-offending X-rated videos because they contain footage of torture, real blood and other matter that would appeal to persons with a “morbid interest” in sex.

Defense attorney Norman Atkins of Beverly Hills, a veteran of years of obscenity litigation, countered that community standards have proven impossible to establish in the area of pornography and, in any event, that acts of far graver violence and depravity than those in the offending videos are regularly displayed on television and movie screens.

Atkins prolonged Cowett’s X-rated education by insisting that she watch seven films that prosecutors seized from Weiner but did not charge him for distributing. Atkins argued that investigators apparently had concluded that those videos were not obscene, and he wanted Cowett to see that they were no more or less offensive than the six the prosecution had labelled illegal pornography.

The judge took only a moment to decide the issue in the prosecution’s favor. Cowett--pardon the expression--bound Wiener over for trial, ruling without comment that Stahl had shown probable cause for his arrest.

Even before a trial in the case, one party close to the proceedings was acknowledging some guilt.

Municipal Court Presiding Judge Frederic Link had brought a piece of cake to Cowett earlier in the week to make amends for assigning her the case.

Like some of the other judges, bailiffs, court clerks and reporters who dropped by the courtroom during the screenings, Link stayed just long enough to critique the evidence. He said Thursday that the films, whatever their legal standing, were lacking in both production quality and acting.

“It was crud,” the jurist said.