United States of America v. Christopher S. Handley is a court case involving obscenity charges stemming from the possession of erotic cartoons.
Contents
Arrest
In October 2008, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund became involved in a case defending 38-year-old Iowa comic collector named Christopher Handley, with Eric Chase of its United Defense Group providing his legal defense. Chase argued, "there are no actual children. It was all very crude images from a comic book." This is related to obscenity charges involving pornography depicting minors, being applied to a fictional comic book. On this, Chase said, "This prosecution has profound implications in limiting the First Amendment for art and artists, and comics in particular that are on the cutting edge of creativity. It misunderstands the nature of avant-garde art in its historical perspective and is a perversion of anti-obscenity laws." Charles Brownstein of the CBLDF commented, "The government is prosecuting a private collector for the possession of art, in the past, CBLDF has had to defend the First Amendment rights of retailers and artists, but never before have we experienced the federal government attempting to strip a citizen of his freedom because he owned comic books."
Trial
United States district court Judge James E. Gritzner was petitioned to drop some of the charges, but instead ruled that two parts of the PROTECT Act criminalizing "a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting" were unconstitutional. Handley still faces an obscenity charge. The motion was initially heard on June 24, 2008, but was not widely publicized prior to the Fund's involvement. CBLDF leader Neil Gaiman remarked on how this could apply to his work The Doll's House, saying, "if you bought that comic, you could be arrested for it? That's just deeply wrong. Nobody was hurt. The only thing that was hurt were ideas." He then initiated a perfume sales campaign to raise funds for Handley's legal defense.
Sentencing
Handley was convicted in May 2009 as the result of entering a guilty plea bargain at the recommendation of Chase, under the belief that the jury chosen to judge him would not acquit him of the obscenity charges if they were shown the images of question.
The bargain resulted in 6 months in jail or prison. He was facing 15 years and a $250,000 fine. Additionally the deal included 3 years supervised release and 5 years probation.