Jack Ray Culberston v. State of California

In the Municipal Court of the San Diego, California Judicial District, appellant was convicted of violating section 311.2 of the California Penal Code. The statute, in effect, proscribes the sale of obscene material. The appellant was the proprietor of a San Diego newspaper and magazine store. The charge and subsequent conviction rested upon his sale of a packet containing twelve photographs. Only one of the pictures was visible through the cellophane wrapping of the packet. After all California state court remedies had been exhausted, appellant filed his petition for writ of habeas corpus in the court below. This appeal is from the District Court’s denial of the petition.

We have examined the photographs in question. Each depicts four scantily clad women whose poses might be provocative to some. The pictures are not artistic, but we are thoroughly convinced that they are not “hard-core” pornography and that they do not, in their expression, go “substantially beyond customary limits of candor.” See Redrup v. State of New York, 386 U.S. 767 , 87 S.Ct. 1414 , 18 L.Ed.2d 515 (1967); Jacobellis v. State of Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 , 84 S.Ct. 1676 , 12 L.Ed.2d 793 (1964); Roth v. United…