JONESBORO, Ark.—As AVN readers have probably heard by now, there are a number of websites, called tube sites, that accept and post hardcore content shot by members of the general public in their homes, cars, RVs, boats and other conveyances, not to mention in state parks, in the middle of lakes, wheat fields, on top of national monuments and, really, wherever the spirit moves them to shoot.
So it's hardly unprecedented that longtime couple Leslie Sessions and Derek Calloway have been shooting "sex acts" in various places.
"The video appears to have been shot in one day, beginning at Cheddars restaurant in Jonesboro," reported a member of the WMC-TV5 staff. "It starts with Sessions eating a meal. You see three older women at a table nearby who likely hadn't planned to be in a pornographic video. It then proceeds to a sex act at the table. ... The couple then moved on to Home Depot, videoing pornographic acts in the parking lot. Inside the store, Sessions frequently showed her underwear and touched herself in the appliance section. Prosecutors said the couple performed a sex act in a dressing room at Kohl's. Then they went a park in Jonesboro where Sessions performed a sex act on herself and an unidentifiable man."
What might be a surprise, however, is that Jonesboro cops busted the couple for it after they posted the footage on a tube site.
To be clear, no member of the public complained about the sex acts, even though some were clearly aware they were taking place (like the three ladies at the next table over in Cheddars, as can be seen in the video), and Leslie Sessions even boasted that, "As we were leaving the [Home Depot] parking lot, apparently a lot of people caught notice of what we were doing. So I just had a truck loaded down of dudes waving at me so I decided to wave back and I got a few kisses blown back."
And even those "dudes" didn't complain—but the police are using Leslie's statement as evidence for the charge of "Public Display, Hardcore Sexual Conduct." Of course, the fact that no law enforcement official caught them in flagrante delicto (that's "having sex" for you non-Latins) should make that "public display" charge harder to prove, since no member of the public has yet come forward to say he/she saw it; the police are apparently relying on the video itself as proof—and this being Arkansas, that might just be enough.
While it's unclear just how the police became aware of Calloway's/Sessions' activities—after all, it's not as if cops watch porn ever—they nevertheless managed to procure a search warrant in July and search the couple's home for those instruments of the crime, "recording devices." Neither the couple nor their two children were happy about that.
Eventually, the couple were charged with nine felony counts: the aforementioned public display, and also sale and distribution of obscene material, and promoting an obscene performance. Again, what passes for "obscenity" in Arkansas may be a little different than in more civilized areas, but the couple's attorney, Randel Miller, thinks they have a good defense.
"I think what they did was not a crime and I think it is a crime they have been publicly humiliated like this about something that was a private matter to them," Miller told WMC-TV5 reporter Janice Broach. "There may have been people around but no one saw this. This was never reported. This was a victimless crime."
The couple will face trial in November and, if convicted, could be fined up to $10,000 and/or be sentenced to six months in prison. The question now is, which members of the public will be testifying against them at the trial?
