Local News in Brief : Obscenity Conviction

In what prosecutors said was the first conviction under California’s tougher new obscenity law, the operator of a Hollywood mail order pornography firm was found guilty Monday of illegally distributing short stories describing the sexual torture and murder of children.

After deliberating for three days, a Los Angeles Municipal Court jury convicted Gary Jerome Levinson of six misdemeanor counts of distributing obscene material and one count of advertising obscene material in a catalogue for his now-defunct, one-man company, Fischer Publications.

Under an obscenity law that became effective Jan. 1, 1987, prosecutors no longer have to prove that material is “utterly without redeeming social importance” to win a conviction. Now they only need to demonstrate that no reasonable person would find the material to have significant literary, artistic, scientific or political value.