Rap Group’s Defense Probes Area Standards : Trial: A detective acknowledges in the 2 Live Crew case that the Florida site of a controversial concert is near adult clubs and bookstores.

Nude dance shows and adult bookstores are scattered throughout the county where the rap group 2 Live Crew gave its controversial performance, a police detective testified today at the band’s obscenity trial.

Defense attorney Bruce Rogow cross-examined Broward County Sheriff’s Vice Detective Eugene McCloud, the prosecution’s first witness, in an attempt to show that the sexually explicit concert did not violate contemporary community standards.

The standards issue is one of the yardsticks the jury must use to determine whether band leader Luther Campbell and band members Christopher Wongwon and Mark Ross are guilty of giving an obscene performance at Club Futura in Hollywood, Fla., on June 10, two days after a federal judge declared the group’s album “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” obscene.

If convicted, each band member could be sentenced to up to one year in prison and fined $1,000.

McCloud acknowledged that the concert was held in an area where there are adult nightclubs and bookstores, which are “all over Broward County.”

The detective, who taped the concert with a mini-cassette recorder while posing as a fan, also testified that he recorded only about 50 minutes of the performance and not the whole concert.

On Wednesday, Judge June Johnson stopped the proceedings while the song “Me So Horny” was played from a tape recording of the concert to respond to a note from jurors asking if they could chuckle while they listened to the scratchy recording.

“They want to know if they are allowed to laugh,” Johnson told lawyers outside the jury’s presence. “They don’t want to cackle. Apparently, some of them are experiencing some pain. Occasionally, they had to suppress the need to laugh.”

She briefly discussed it with the lawyers, called jurors back and informed them, “You may laugh if you want to.”

Earlier story, A25.