Today adult retailer Shawn Jenkins began his third trial on obscenity charges that stem from a video sold to an undercover police officer in 2001.
In July of 2003, the Hamilton County judge hearing the case granted a mistrial after defense lawyer Lou Sirkin called for a mistrial after notig that two of the jurors fell asleep during the screening of allegedly obscene video.
Obscenity cases often rest on community values. That makes the viewing of videos in obscenity cases essential, because the jury, representing the community, must decide if a video is obscene after viewing the video “as a whole.”
The first trial of the case ended after the prosecutor’s office refused to turn over two other tapes had been successfully defended in front of a grand jury against obscenity charges in the same county.
While the jury from the second trial watched the 90-minute Maximum Hardcore Extreme Vol. 7 one male juror napped and another juror, an elderly woman, turned her head away from the video monitor several times prompting defense lawyer Lou Sirkin to call for a mistrial.
Jenkins, who owns Tip Top Magazines, the shop where the video in question was sold, was charged with pandering obscenity a charge that carries a sentence of up to one year in prison.
There is no limit to the amount of mistrials one case can have.
