Jury Convicts Man of Child Porn Charges

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 three days, a Los Angeles Muncipal Court jury convicted Gary Jerome Levinson of six misdemeanor counts of distributing obscene material through four stories, a video and an audiotape and one count of advertising obscene material in a catalogue for his now-defunct, one-man company, Fischer Publications.

Jurors acquitted Levinson of one charge and deadlocked on two other counts.

Levinson, 38, could face up to 3 1/2 years in jail and a $7,000 fine, the city attorney’s office said. Sentencing was set for July 6 in Los Angeles Municipal Court.

Nearly a Decade

The prosecutor in the 3-week trial, Deputy City Atty. Michael Guarino, said the case marks the first obscenity conviction by a Los Angeles jury in almost a decade.

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

Levinson was arrested in January, two weeks after Los Angeles vice detectives raided his Hollywood home and seized pornographic materials, his 1,110-customer mailing list and his 40-page catalogue.

Levinson, who is free on bail, is also facing trial July 19 in U.S. District Court on federal charges of mailing obscene materials. Two of the three counts involve videotapes that led to dismissed counts in the Municipal Court case after the jury was unable to reach a verdict.