ring circus.
Jury selection is going on this week in the criminal case involving John Haltom, the owner of Dr. John's, an Omaha adult video and novelty store. Of the 23 potential jurors, attorneys are trying to whittle down the group to the six jurors who will decide whether the videos that Haltom sells in his store are obscene.
"If we get a juror on there that is predisposed (against the videos) . . . if we can't identify those people and get them off the jury, we don't have a chance to begin with," said attorney Tom Petersen, who represents Haltom.
Haltom and his assistant manager, David Bacon, face three counts of distributing obscene materials - two counts were filed against Haltom and one against Bacon. Police ticketed them in January after Haltom opened his store and began selling sexually explicit videos. It was the first time in many years that adult videos were sold openly within the city limits.
The case is set for trial next week and is expected to take about a day. It will feature testimony from police and defense experts.The name of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a nationally known sex therapist, was floated as one possible defense witness. She or another expert would be called to testify that the videos have redeeming value under the obscenity standard.
In jury selection, attorneys tried to figure out where potential jurors stood on the issue of obscenity and cautioned them that they would be watching graphic material during the trial.
As Petersen put it, jurors will have to view "three-and-a-half hours of nonstop video action." All agreed they would be able to watch the videos, but one woman was removed from the jury pool after indicating that she considered the mere presence of Haltom's shop in Omaha a detriment to the community.
Another woman said she "wouldn't be caught dead" inside an adult video store. She remained in the jury pool but didn't make the final cut onto the jury. Petersen asked a number of questions that, as he put it, "if you were speaking to your grandmother, you might not want to answer." More than half raised their hands when asked if they had ever watched an adult video.
Assistant City Prosecutor Mike Tesar asked jurors whether they could follow the law on obscenity, even if they disagreed with it. Tesar likened it to a marijuana case, where a juror might believe the drug should be legal but must find a defendant guilty of using the drug.
Haltom is facing five other criminal counts stemming from his video sales. A separate trial for those counts is pending. Haltom said that he felt confident that jurors would side with him in favor of his First Amendment right to sell the videos.
"How many people you know don't watch adult videos?" he asked. "It's a multibillion-dollar industry. Not millions - billions."
