United States v. William Pinkus, Doing Business as "Rosslyn News Company" and "Kamera,"

Following the issuance of this court’s opinion on April 7, 1977, we directed that issuance of the mandate be stayed pending timely application for a writ of certiorari. The writ was granted and the Supreme Court reversed and remanded, holding the jury instructions improper insofar as they permitted children to be included in the community by whose standards obscenity was to be judged. Pinkus, d/b/a “Rosslyn News Company” and “Kamera” v. United States, - U.S. -, 98 S.Ct. 1808 , 56 L.Ed.2d 293 (1978). Portions of the charge relating to sensitive persons, deviant groups and pandering were approved.

The Supreme Court held also that we improperly invoked the concurrent sentence doctrine in declining to address the trial court’s rejection of the defendant’s offers of sexually explicit films, allegedly “compara ble” to the charged film “No. 613,” as evidence of community standards. Because there may be a new trial, and because this issue is likely to be raised again, we offer the following guidelines for the district court.

The admissibility of “comparables” in obscenity prosecutions has been a subject of confusion. Womack v. United States, 166 U.S.App.D.C. 35 , 509 F.2d 368, 374…