Bill to Ease Prosecution of Porn OKd by Senate

Legislation aimed at broadening the legal definition of pornography in California and making it easier to prosecute smut peddlers won Senate approval Tuesday.

The embattled election-year bill by Sen. Wadie Deddeh (D-Chula Vista) was passed on a 27-7 vote. An identical version awaited expected passage in the Assembly, which would send it to Gov. George Deukmejian.

A Deukmejian spokesman said the governor has not taken a position on the bill.

Basically, the proposal would write into the lawbooks broader definitions of what constitutes obscene matter, obscene live conduct and harmful matter. Supporters said this would enable prosecutors to more easily convict pornographers.

The bill would establish statewide standards for what constitutes pornography based on a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Fundamentalist Christians and members of the political New Right, rallied by hard-core conservative Sen. H. L. Richardson (R-Glendora), strongly supported an earlier version of the bill that would have allowed individual communities throughout California to set their own standards.

However, some Democrats and Republicans opposed the community-by-community approach, asserting that it would create a patchwork of unequal and conflicting definitions of pornography. They were joined by movie producers, booksellers, librarians, newspaper executives and broadcasters, among others.

In a move that appeared to doom the bill, the Senate Rules Committee sent it to the Judiciary Committee, which had previously killed a community standards anti-porn bill. The Judiciary Committee, however, lateraled the issue to a two-house conference committee which produced the final bill without community standards.

This enabled the Legislature to vote on an anti-pornography bill that contained statewide standards in an election-year when many lawmakers see a public demand for such legislation.

The decisive Rules Committee vote to send the bill to the Judiciary Committee was cast by Sen. William Craven (R-Oceanside), who said he opposed standards that would vary from one community to another.

Angry at the outcome, Richardson went on a radio program in San Diego County, parts of which are represented by Craven, and denounced him as the “King of Porn.” An expert political fund-raiser, Richardson repeated a threat to run a candidate against Craven in 1990.

In an emotional floor debate Tuesday, Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), who had opposed the Deddeh bill when it contained the community standards provisions but supported the latest version, bitterly assailed Richardson, who will retire in November. Richardson was not on the floor at the time.

‘Vicious Attack’

Without mentioning Richardson by name, Roberti accused him of making a “vicious” attack against Craven and praised the popular and even-tempered Craven as a “senator who does not cow down to that kind of bullying.”

Roberti, clearly referring to Richardson, told the Senate that during hard-fought legislative battles “you always hear the faint din of zieg heil, “ a World War II victory cry of Nazi Germany.

Richardson later said his tactics against Craven and other lawmakers “flushed out” legislative supporters of pornographers. “The one error I made is when I referred to him as the King of Porn,” Richardson said of Craven. “I was wrong. He’s not the king of anything . . . (but) the porn people all like him. The porn people have won again.”

Current state law is based on a 1966 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. In part, the California statute defines as obscene any material that an average person applying contemporary statewide standards would find appeals to prurient interests. Additionally, such material must be “utterly without redeeming social value,” a conclusion prosecutors say is difficult to prove.

The Deddeh bill is drawn from a 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court in the case of Miller vs. California, in which the court refined its definition of obscene matter. It became known as the “Miller standard.”

The bill retains the concept of an average person applying current statewide standards but eliminates the “utterly without redeeming social value” provision. Instead, it would substitute a requirement that the material be shown to lack “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value,” a finding prosecutors say would help them in obscenity cases.