A third arrest in connection with the Ray Guhn case was made Monday by the Escambia County Sheriff’s office.
Andrew Kevin Craft, 38, was taken into custody at his home in Pensacola, Fla. It is believed Craft served as the general manager for a site owned and operated by webmaster Clinton Raymond McCowen, aka Ray Guhn.
McCowen is the owner and operator of Cashtitans.com, run by Ray Guhn Productions. The six year old affiliate program is home to such sites as CumOnHerFace.com, HotRikki.com, BustyTramps.com and LesbianHangout.com.
Craft was booked on a charge of racketeering—conducting a criminal enterprise by engaging in prostitution and the manufacture and sale of obscene material.
Assistant State Attorney Russ Edgar led the investigation. Edgar estimated that about 100 local men and women participated in the films, though he would not identify any of those people or say how the filmmakers located them.
According to an arrest affidavit, a confidential informant told investigators that Craft solicited her to make movies for Ray Guhn Productions.
In addition, the affidavit states the informant said she was paid to have sex with Craft, McCowen, and another associate during “private parties”' at which they would determine whether women would be good performers.
The informant reported making as much as $1,000 for a movie.
The Pensacola News Journal reports that another confidential source told investigators that Craft, known to her as Jim, was responsible for recruiting models, finding locations for shoots, making the movies, and paying the models.
Craft was in the Escambia County jail on Monday evening under $75,000 bond. McCowen and Stevens posted bond over the weekend. Edgar said more arrests are expected in “the next several days or several weeks.”
Under Florida law, for material to be declared legally obscene in Escambia County, the following must be found: “The average person, applying contemporary community standards of Escambia County, would find that the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interests, the material depicts or describes sexual activity in a patently offensive way, the material, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
“It’s extremely confusing,” says Tom Julin, a Miami attorney who is listed in the book Best Lawyers in America as a First Amendment lawyer. “You see so much sexual content on cable channels and the Internet. Why has there not been a prosecution of HBO?”
According to state and local laws, material such as Playboy magazine and explicit shows on cable might be pornographic, but they’re not obscene.
“There is a difference between pornography and obscenity,”' says Assistant State Attorney Greg Marcille of Pensacola in an interview with the Pensacola Journal. “Pornography is a general term for sexual-related material. Obscenity is material that meets the legal definition of what is considered obscene under the law.”'
The Journal reported that Edgar refused to answer hypothetical questions involving consequences of consenting adult sexual activity conducted in privacy. But he noted that U.S. Circuit Judge Kim Skievaski reviewed the films in question before the local arrests were made. In 1969’s Stanley v. Georgia case, the court ruled that “private possession of obscene documents is not a punishable offense. Punishment is only allowed if those documents are purchased and distributed for commercial use.”
In 1973’s Miller v. California case, the Supreme Court ruled that obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment.
“Confusion quite often reigns,”' says Florida local civil rights attorney Dan Soloway, “but the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t help us. It’s basically decided by each community. What is legal behavior in Brewton, Ala., could be illegal in Pensacola.”
Julin said even the wording of the law can be confusing.
“How do you determine the average person applying contemporary standards? And, they must find that the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, whatever that means,” Julin says. “The material depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way. Well, if you have thousands and thousands of people in your community looking at [pornography] on the Internet, it would be hard to say it’s patently offensive.”
