Home Movies

The federal and state agents who entered the Atlanta home of Robert Eli Stanley in 1967 to search for proof of suspected bookmaking failed to unearth any evidence of gambling. But they did find three reels of film that, as they later testified, depicted "successive orgies of seduction, sodomy and sexual intercourse." Stanley was convicted under a Georgia law that forbids possession of obscene material, and sentenced to a year in prison. Last week, in a decision that reversed Stanley's conviction, the Supreme Court ruled that no matter how obscene his movies might have been, he had every right to view them in his own home.

In a separate opinion, three Justices-- Potter Stewart, Byron White and William Brennan--noted that because the agents' warrant authorized them to confiscate only gambling equipment, Stanley had also been the victim of an illegal search. The rest of the court, in an opinion written by Justice Thurgood Marshall, struck down Stanley's conviction for other, broader reasons. The constitutional right to "receive information and ideas," wrote Marshall, takes on an "added dimension" in the privacy of a man's home. "If the First Amendment means anything," Marshall continued, "it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving Government the power to control men's minds."

Marshall took pains to point out that the decision does not impair the court's previous rulings, which permit restrictions on publishers and sellers of obscene material. "The states," said Marshall, "retain broad power to regulate obscenity." That being the case, the new ruling creates an anomalous situation. "It says," complained District Attorney Lewis Slaton of Atlanta's Fulton County, "that a person has a right to possess obscene material which is illegal to sell."

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