home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Shareware Overload Trio 2
/
Shareware Overload Trio Volume 2 (Chestnut CD-ROM).ISO
/
dir33
/
cwru_ct.zip
/
90-1124.ZS
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1993-11-06
|
5KB
|
83 lines
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
JACOBSON v. UNITED STATES
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the eighth circuit
No. 90-1124. Argued November 6, 1991-Decided April 6, 1992
At a time when federal law permitted such conduct, petitioner Jacobson
ordered and received from a bookstore two Bare Boys magazines
containing photographs of nude preteen and teenage boys. Subse-
quently, the Child Protection Act of 1984 made illegal the receipt
through the mails of sexually explicit depictions of children. After
finding Jacobson's name on the bookstore mailing list, two Govern-
ment agencies sent mail to him through five fictitious organizations
and a bogus pen pal, to explore his willingness to break the law.
Many of those organizations represented that they were founded to
protect and promote sexual freedom and freedom of choice and that
they promoted lobbying efforts through catalog sales. Some mailings
raised the spectre of censorship. Jacobson responded to some of the
correspondence. After 2- years on the Government mailing list,
Jacobson was solicited to order child pornography. He answered a
letter that described concern about child pornography as hysterical
nonsense and decried international censorship, and then received a
catalog and ordered a magazine depicting young boys engaged in
sexual activities. He was arrested after a controlled delivery of a
photocopy of the magazine, but a search of his house revealed no
materials other than those sent by the Government and the Bare
Boys magazines. At his jury trial, he pleaded entrapment and
testified that he had been curious to know the type of sexual actions
to which the last letter referred and that he had been shocked by the
Bare Boys magazines because he had not expected to receive photo-
graphs of minors. He was convicted, and the Court of Appeals
affirmed.
Held:The prosecution failed, as a matter of law, to adduce evidence to
support the jury verdict that Jacobson was predisposed, independent
of the Government's acts and beyond a reasonable doubt, to violate
the law by receiving child pornography through the mails. In their
zeal to enforce the law, Government agents may not originate a
criminal design, implant in an innocent person's mind the disposition
to commit a criminal act, and then induce commission of the crime
so that the Government may prosecute. Sorrells v. United States,
287 U.S. 435, 442. Jacobson was not simply offered the opportunity
to order pornography, after which he promptly availed himself of that
opportunity. He was the target of 26 months of repeated Govern-
ment mailings and communications, and the Government has failed
to carry its burden of proving predisposition independent of its
attention. The preinvestigation evidence-the Bare Boys maga-
zines-merely indicates a generic inclination to act within a broad
range, not all of which is criminal. Furthermore, Jacobson was
acting within the law when he received the magazines, and he
testified that he did not know that they would depict minors. As for
the evidence gathered during the investigation, Jacobson's responses
to the many communications prior to the criminal act were at most
indicative of certain personal inclinations and would not support the
inference that Jacobson was predisposed to violate the Child Protec-
tion Act. On the other hand, the strong arguable inference is that,
by waving the banner of individual rights and disparaging the
legitimacy and constitutionality of efforts to restrict the availability
of sexually explicit materials, the Government not only excited
Jacobson's interest in material banned by law but also exerted
substantial pressure on him to obtain and read such material as part
of the fight against censorship and the infringement of individual
rights. Thus, rational jurors could not find beyond a reasonable
doubt that Jacobson possessed the requisite predisposition before the
Government's investigation and that it existed independent of the
Government's many and varied approaches to him. Pp.7-12.
916 F.2d 467, reversed.
White, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Blackmun,
Stevens, Souter, and Thomas, JJ., joined. O'Connor, J., filed a
dissenting opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Kennedy, J., joined,
and in which Scalia, J., joined except as to Part II.