Framing Innocence by Lynn Powell

Author:Lynn Powell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2019-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

Cogs and Wheels

Amy knew that the magistrate would not allow her to call many more witnesses. Still, she wanted to push as hard as she could to establish that Cynthia’s community did not see her pictures as obscene. When the hearings reconvened the following Tuesday, January 25, Amy asked a half-dozen witnesses to return to the court’s waiting room. The rest of us were on call. Since Nora had had enough of courthouses for a while, she came to my house to play with Jesse after school that day.

Amy’s first witness was A.G. Miller, an African American man in his mid-forties with a round face, round gold-rimmed glasses, a thoughtful manner, and a full résumé: he had worked as a social worker, had earned a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton, and now taught at Oberlin College and pastored a small congregation. His youngest daughter was a classmate of Nora’s. After A.G. had praised Cynthia as a mother, Amy handed him the shower sprayer pictures and asked, “Do you believe that a normal adult or average adult with average sexual intentions, male or female, would be turned on by these pictures or sexually aroused by these pictures?”

List objected. She had been conducting more research over the weekend and had discovered that “the actual language is whether or not the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest. Not whether that particular average individual would become aroused by the photos.” A lengthy argument ensued, with both lawyers quoting case law and disputing the definition of “prurient.” Eventually they agreed that prurient was “a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion, which goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor.” A.G. replied that, no, he did not find the pictures prurient.

During cross-examination, List spoke to A.G. as a former social worker: “Let’s assume that you don’t know Cynthia and you don’t know Nora and those pictures came to you in the case file. If you were sitting at your desk with your social work background, would those pictures cause you concern for this child?”

“Well, I would ask the question, Why were they taken?” A.G. said.

“And that is a fair question that social workers ask, don’t they?”

“Right. I have no problem with the investigation. I think that it would be only fair to ask the question, and the conclusion that I would draw is not necessarily one that would be negative toward Cynthia or Nora.”

“When photographs like these are taken, where would be the appropriate place to exhibit these photographs?” List asked.

Amy objected: “It doesn’t go to the test in the case, and there is no scintilla of evidence that she was going to exhibit them in some store window in Oberlin or sell them or anything like that.”

“Your Honor, it’s very easy for someone to sit and hear a dictionary definition of obscene,” List argued. “It’s much more difficult when confronting the real question that underlies obscene, and that is,

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