PHOENIX – After just five hours of deliberation, a jury composed of eight women and four men announced at 1:00 this afternoon that they had determined that Five Star Video LC and Five Star Video Outlet LC were guilty of obscenity charges for having shipped JM Productions’ Gag Factor 18 to an undercover FBI agent in Falls Church, VA.
The jury found the Five Star companies guilty of the interstate transportation of obscene materials and the interstate transportation of obscene material by common carrier. However, the companies were acquitted of the same charges for shipping two similar JM Productions videos, Filthy Things 6 and American Bukakke 13.
Five Star co-owner Ken Graham, who had received a directed verdict of not guilty on Tuesday, told AVN that he spoke with some of the jurors after they had been dismissed by Judge Roslyn O. Silver. Graham said that the jurors had agreed that Gag Factor 18 was “too extreme” for the community standards of the Phoenix area.
However, the jurors admitted that many of them were familiar with adult video productions, and had found Filthy Things 6 consistent with ordinary adult fare. The jurors were divided as to American Bukakke 13, with its depiction of multiple men ejaculating on a single female – which several of the jurors had found offensive, according to Graham.
“What’s interesting to me is that we told the jurors about some of the evidence that the judge had excluded from the case,” Graham said, “and they told us that if they had known that that material was being sold in the Phoenix area, it probably would have made a difference in their verdicts.”
Watch this space for updates.
