Robert Zicari and Janet Romano, better known to the adult video industry as Rob Black and Lizzie Borden, were arraigned this morning at the U.S. Federal Courthouse for the Western District of Pennsylvania after having been formally arrested for trafficking in obscenity by mail and over the Internet. At the hearing, the pair were released on their own recognizance, with a bail figure set at $100,000 for each.
"We entered pleas of not guilty," described H. Louis Sirkin, the prominent First Amendment attorney who has been retained as the couple's counsel. "We've been given 10 days to file motions; we'll probably file for an agreed additional 30 days to file motions. They have the normal federal travel restrictions: Central district of California, southern district of Ohio and the district here in Pittsburgh. Anywhere else, we could seek permission, and I don't anticipate there will be any problems."
Zicari and Romano had previously surrendered their passports in exchange for being allowed to surrender themselves to federal marshals at the time of the arraignment.
Since the government is not required to present any evidence at the arraignment hearing, no testimony was taken at the morning's hearing; however, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan did furnish copies of the affidavits for the search warrant to the defense.
"It [the warrant] really doesn't say a whole lot," Sirkin observed. "My guess would be the investigation really became centerfold from the Frontline program. The one thing I will say was absent from any of the affidavits was anything that anybody may have in the past been speculating about, [which were] intensive investigations of Extreme Associates by the Los Angeles Police Department and all that. There's absolutely nothing in the affidavits about that; strictly something starting from the Frontline show, and based upon videos that were ordered, and that is what brought about the charges. I don't believe it was a tremendously in-depth investigation. I think it was very similar to the traditional cases that happened at the end of the '80s and early '90s in PostPorn."
However, Sirkin was adamant about the harm that can accrue to adult companies from opening up to the press.
"I think that the industry people need to be sensible in the sense of, everybody wants to be on television, they want their 15 minutes of fame, but they need to remember that fame doesn't just go unnoticed," Sirkin pointed out. "I'm convinced that it's not necessarily just the criticism of the government; I think it's the spin-offs of a company that Frontline decided to do."
Sirkin referred to the episode of PBS's Frontline, titled "American Porn," that was broadcast in January of this year, and in which footage of Extreme shooting Borden's feature Forced Entry figured heavily.
"My advice to people is, keep your business quiet," Sirkin continued. "You just say you're in the entertainment industry and you stop the soapbox and you don't start bragging. And you don't trust the news media from the standpoint that you think that they're going to do some wonderful story on you, because they're not going to do it. Everybody that gets out there and starts boasting is subjecting themselves to being challenged by the government.
"These shows like Frontline, 20/20, 60 Minutes and all that, contrary to what everybody believes, they're out for sensationalism," Sirkin said. "The sensationalism is for them to go with what they believe is the popular political agenda, so I think that anybody that starts to be interviewed and allows people to come in – you know, you don't start inviting people into your company, because they're going to present it the way they want to present it, not the way you think you are, and they'll bullshit you. I think that's what happened with my clients."
Sirkin said he intends to file several pretrial motions which he hopes will get the charges dismissed entirely.
"We intend to file a [substantive due process] motion to dismiss based upon Lawrence [v. Texas, the sodomy case], similar to what we have filed in the Jenkins case and in Louisiana," Sirkin detailed. "We may decide to challenge the affidavit for the search warrant and we may attempt to challenge the grand jury process as to what instructions, at least on the issue of obscenity, they may have been given, as to what advice they were given as to what the community consisted of."
That last point arose out of the fact that the defendants have been charged with obscenity for something presented on the Extreme Website, and rulings from the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, as recently as March, 2003, have held that the "community" for the "community standards" prong of the Supreme Court's Miller obscenity test consists of the entire world.
For more information on Sirkin's substantive due process motion in the Jenkins case, please see the article in the September AVN.
After the pretrial motions from both sides have been received and considered, a firm date for trial will be set.
Stay tuned to AVN.com for further developments in this first federal obscenity case to be brought in nearly a decade.
