Late Monday afternoon, adult feature performer/retailer Jennifer Dute walked out of the Franklin Pre-Release Center here a free woman after having served seven and a half months of a year sentence that, according to the First District Court of Appeals, should never have been imposed in the first place.
"They [prosecutors] have two options, which they have made public: That they're going to take it to the Ohio state Supreme Court for an appeal, which they can do that, but their other option is to try me again," Dute told AVN.com. "But the problem is, the First District Court of Appeals has already told them that even if they were to have found me guilty, that I was not part of organized crime or any such thing, which is what Judge Dinkelacker had to say in order to send me to prison."
The Ohio sentencing guidelines reflect that for a simple conviction for Dute's charge, trafficking obscenity, the recommended sentence is probation.
"Exactly," Dute agreed, "and not the maximum sentence. There will be no plea bargain; no, absolutely not. I've already done way over half of the maximum sentence, so I have nothing to lose. I mean, they're talking about seven and a half months of my life! 'Oh, well, if you just plead guilty, they won't make you do any more time' Well, excuse me; they've already made me do seven and a half months, so I'm looking for some pay-back, looking for some justice."
Dute's case is scheduled for a status conference on July 8, and the state may decline further attempts at prosecution at any time either before of after that, but Dute doesn't believe they will.
"It's all about ego," Dute explained, referring to her apparently-justified belief that the prosecution of her and her husband wasn't so much about obscenity as it was about her former Website, www.simonleis.com, which reprinted newspaper stories uncomplimentary to Cincinnati sheriff Simon Leis.
"The political statement I made was that Simon Leis thinks he rules the world from his desk at the Hamilton County sheriff's office, and that's a political statement, 100%, my political opinion," Dute continued. "Now, I could talk about President Bush or I could talk about Saddam Hussein, but as far as talking about a small-town operator sheriff, I should go to prison for that? No, but that's what they made this out to be. They made this out a political thing, and there's no way to fight certain things, but we are fighting back. I feel very confident with [Dute attorneys] Lou [Sirkin] and Jennifer [Kinsley], and, you know, they're not going to get anywhere with this."
"Most of what I want to let everyone know is, I am not backing down," Dute said firmly. "I believe in what I believe in, and I am who I am."
Dute also blames much of the impetus for her prosecution on local pro-censorship group Citizens for Community Values (CCV) and its head, Phil Burress.
"Citizens for Community Values and Phil Burress have been trying to eliminate any hope of anybody ever seeing an adult video in Hamilton County," Dute opined. "But he doesn't live in Hamilton County, so I don't know why he's so concerned with Hamilton Country when he doesn't live her and has never lived here."
"They had me on their win list for 2002. Guess they'll have to scratch me off now," she added.
One of the biggest tragedies of Dute's imprisonment was her inability to care for her newborn son Christopher.
"I was taken away from my family, my very young son," she said. "He was seven months old when I went to prison. I missed his first birthday. He was one day old when I was arrested."
"I think we both went through an emotional rollercoaster," Dute said of her relationship with husband Alan during her imprisonment. "I had the support of my family, and Al had the support of his family, and somehow we managed to pull it all together. At one time, my parents came up from Mississippi to help him with the baby. Another time, his sister came to town for a week and a half and helped with the baby. They had to drop everything that they had going on because they knew that I needed to know that Christopher was taken care of, and I knew that Alan had the situation under control the best that he could, and he's done excellent with Christopher. I couldn't ask for anything more."
Prison life was very hard on Dute, and she lost more than 40 pounds from her 5'11" frame while incarcerated.
"I was minimum security, but when you first get to prison, they do not separate you," she explained. "There was a girl in the bed underneath me who killed her mother. She's doing 25 to life. I was in pre-release, which is just another way of saying, 'You'll go home when we want you to go home.' When you get to prison and you're in the admissions phase, you're in there with baby-killers, you're in there with murderers, you're in there with serious drug trafficking people you couldn't fathom the kind of people you're in there with, because you're with all walks of life, and not on the upper end. It's very scary. Really, you have to sleep with one eye open to see if somebody's going to hurt you, or somebody's going to steal what little bit you do have."
"You learn very quickly to keep your mouth shut; you don't see anything, you don't hear anything, you keep to yourself, or you're going to lose something, more than just your pride," she continued. "They'll either attack you, or steal what you have, or you're set up to make it look like you're doing something you're not. Because I went to a facility that did not allow smoking, but people were getting cigarettes in, and it wouldn't take anything for someone to plant something on you or on your stuff, and then you're in the hole for 30 days. So I did my best to keep my eyes to myself, my ears to myself and my mouth closed. It's hard to be like that, but I was known as 'skinny blonde girl'; that's what they called me. The most [abuse] I really got was when I was leaving, and a guard made some pretty crude remarks."
Dute drew sharp comparisons between the "community standard" in Columbus, where the Franklin Pre-Release Center is located, and Cincinnati, which seems to be in the thrall of CCV and Burress.
"Columbus is a totally different atmosphere than Cincinnati," Dute said. " I am not kidding you, across the street from the facility I was in, there was a billboard advertising a gentlemen's club less than a mile up the road. Columbus has got a lot of not just adult videos; they've got a lot more of your gays and lesbians, so it's a whole lifestyle that's more visible in Columbus than it is in Cincinnati. I'm not saying it isn't in Cincinnati [but] a lot of people in Cincinnati seem to be scared to show their faces."
Worse, with local newspaper magnate Charles Lindner, owner of the Cincinnati Reds, a major contributor to CCV, Dute noted that she never got a fair shake in the local media.
"There was not an article out there that was 100% correct as far as the facts," Dute stated. "So even me getting out, the guy that works for the [ Cincinnati ] Post couldn't even get the story right. But that doesn't surprise me; he did that throughout the trial, too."
We asked Dute what her current plans are.
"Right now, I want to take this time and get back into the groove of life," she said. "It's a totally different thing when you're away for that long of a period of time, and they try to institutionalize you; they try to it's just a hell, let's put it that way. You're not going to know what I mean unless you ever have to go through it."
And in this Age of Bush/Ashcroft, many more adult entrepreneurs may just do so.
Those wishing to make contributions to Dute's defense can send them to either AVN or the Free Speech Coalition, and they will be forwarded.
