A federal lawsuit which accused Salt Lake City authorities with violating a magazine shop's Constitutional rights has been dropped, and the shop's owner has pleaded guilty to distributing porn videos.
Prosecutors originally charged Muhammad Iqbad Sial with 18 counts of the same crime (a class A misdemeanor) but dropped twelve and changed the shop, Bob's Magazine Corner, to the primary defendant in the case, according to the Deseret News.
His attorney says one reason for dropping the suit was the rising porn availability over the Internet.
The shop will pay a $2,500 fine and the same amount in court costs. Undercover police had purchased porn videos at the shop on fourteen different occasions between November 1996 and August 1997, according to court documents.
Attorneys for the shop sued police and prosecutors for seizing hundreds of videos "with no legal finding that they were obscene and without proper search warrants," and the suit asked to block any criminal prosecution of the shop while seeking over $1 million in damages.
--- Philo Levin
