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Texpat

One man's trash is another man's treasure

Ira Isaacs says his films, which feature bestiality and defecation, have artistic value. Federal prosecutors say they are criminally obscene. Hours of footage will help jurors decide who's right.

By Scott Glover
Los Angeles Times
June 9, 2008

If all goes according to plan, an otherwise stately federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles will be converted into a makeshift movie theater this week, screening a series of graphic -- many would say vulgar -- sexual fetish videos.

At issue is how a jury will define obscenity in a region that boasts its status as the capital of the pornography industry and at a time when technology has made the taboo adult flicks of a generation ago available to a mainstream audience.


IRA ISAACS

Hollywood filmmaker Ira Isaacs says the videos he sells are works of art, protected under the Constitution. Federal prosecutors contend the movies are criminally obscene.

The prosecution is the first in Southern California by a U.S. Department of Justice task force formed in 2005 after influential Christian conservative groups appealed to the Bush administration to crack down on smut.

For jurors to determine whether Isaacs' work is obscene, they will have to view hours of hard-core pornography so degrading that in one film, an actress cries throughout, prosecutors said in court papers.

But if jurors find that any of the four videos at issue in the case have any "literary, scientific or artistic value," the work is not legally obscene, according to a 1973 Supreme Court ruling.

"All they're going to do is turn on a DVD machine and hope the jury is going to be so shocked and disgusted and offended that they're going to throw me in prison," said Isaacs, 57, a native of the Bronx. He said he hopes that jurors will be shocked -- he's a self-described "shock artist" -- but also that they will see artistic value in the work.

The portly defendant, who sports a pony tail and goatee, produced and starred in one of the videos. He contends that the sex in the movie is incidental to the art. It's merely a marketing tool to drive sales of the videos on the Internet, he said.

In a statistic that some may find every bit as shocking as his work, Isaacs said he was selling about 1,000 videos per month at $30 apiece before being raided by the FBI early last year. The number has since dropped to between 700 and 800 per month, but they still generate enough money to pay the rent on a house with a pool in the Hollywood Hills.

Isaacs predicted that many jurors would not be able to stomach viewing the movies, some of which feature acts of bestiality and defecation.

"It's going to be a circus," he said of the upcoming trial. "I think I'd freak out if I had to watch six hours of the stuff."

Jury selection is expected to begin Monday. Presiding over the trial will be Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Kozinski was assigned the case as part of a rotation in which he and other appeals court judges occasionally oversee criminal trials in addition to deciding appeals.

His involvement in the case may be a stroke of luck for Isaacs. That's because Kozinski is seen as a staunch defender of free speech. When he learned that there were filters banning pornography and other materials from computers in the appeals court's Pasadena offices, he led a successful effort to have the filters removed.

"I did some rabble-rousing about it," Kozinski said in a brief interview last week. He said he was made aware of the issue when a law clerk researching a case was banned from accessing a gay bookstore's website.

"I didn't think the bureaucrats in Washington should decide what the federal judiciary should have access to," the judge said. "I thought that was incredibly arrogant for them to decide on their own."

Kozinski declined comment on any aspect of the Isaacs case.

Isaacs said he would testify as his own expert witness at trial and planned to lecture jurors on how perceptions of art have changed over the years. There was a time, he said, when the works of authors James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence were called obscene.

The point, Isaacs said, "is do we really want to throw artists in jail in America?"

Kenneth Whitted, the Justice Department prosecutor assigned to the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, declined to be interviewed for this article.

According to the Justice Department's website, the task force "is dedicated exclusively to the protection of America's children and families through the enforcement of our Nation's obscenity laws."

The task force has won convictions in more than a dozen cases, the vast majority resulting from plea bargains, according to case summaries provided by the department. Only a handful of defendants have elected to fight the charges at trial. Punishment in most cases included some prison time, ranging from one to seven years, as well as stiff fines and forfeiture of proceeds.

At a time when even hard-core pornography is available in major hotels, through cable companies and on the Internet, prosecutors have focused their efforts on particularly outrageous material, often involving sex with animals and defecation.

Most of the cases were brought in relatively conservative areas of the country, five of them in Texas. Whether jurors in Southern California have more lenient views on obscenity will be tested at Isaacs' trial.

Federal agents raided Isaacs' Koreatown office in January 2007. Isaacs said he was told by authorities that the investigation was initiated after a local person complained, and was eventually turned over to the task fore in Washington. He is now facing charges related to the importation, transportation and distribution of obscene material in connection with four videos he was selling over the Internet, including the one he produced. Isaacs admits to producing that film and to distributing all four.

But he denies that they're obscene.

"That's for the jury to decide," he said.

He said that prosecutors have made several overtures inviting him to take a plea in the case, but that he has refused every time.

Pleading guilty would be admitting that he was just another pornographer, he said.

"If I get convicted and go to prison now," Isaacs said, "I go as an artist."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-obscene9-2008jun09,0,4510463.story?page=2

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Is it obscene or is it art? I'm on the fence.

Milkman

If it involves consenting adults, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

The beastiality part, I am not sure of. I don't think animals can consent.

And by the way, I'm not into this stuff.

sabang

Where does one draw the line? Is there a line?

I consider myself pretty open minded, but some of this type of Porn is utterly degrading. I think I'm on the side of a line being established.

Butterfly

Bestiality is definitely animal torture and should be illegal

obsidian

strict freedom of speech advocate, am i.

Texpat

What about snuff films? That's art to some -- but involves killing someone. Is that OK? How far does freedom of speech go? I've never seen a donkey talk.

obsidian

never been to dinner at ejaculator's i take it.

obsidian

snuff is murder. cant kill in the name of art. unless his name was Art.

Whiteshiva

I seem to recall reading somewhere (!) that snuff movies were an urban legend. I hope it is true. I am sure there are prenty of film footage of people being killed, but that someone has killed for the sole purpose of filming it - surely not?

Milkman

Snuff films sound very sick. Is it consentual?

Animals? No, I've not seen an animal talk, so therefore I assume there is no consent, nor power to object.

Norton

Doubt they will have much trouble getting jury volunteers.

Norton

Censorship....one group imposing their morals on others. Don't buy into it myself. If no crime committed making the movie, why should the law come down on the movie maker. Bestiality? Not to my liking but have seen a couple of the real "dog and pony" shows. If a wagging tail on the dog and hearty heeha from the donkey are any sign, then it was consensual.

__________________
Eat right, exercise daily, live clean, die anyway.

raycarey

i don't know if it is 'torture', but it is certainly cruel, and should be outlawed.

britmaveric

And they wonder where these weird diseases come from? Leave the animals alone.

As for the scat, vomit and piss vids - I may find it disgusting however its a legit fetish and between consenting adults who am I to prohibit it? Can't be healthy for the participants though.

Whiteshiva

80 millions Germans can't be wrong!

Texpat

LA obscenity case nauseates potential jurors

By Linda Deutsch
Washington Post
June 10, 2008

LOS ANGELES -- What violates community obscenity standards in the nation's reputed pornography capital? Federal prosecutors think they have a case.

Ira Isaacs readily admits he produced and sold movies depicting bestiality and sexual activity involving feces and urine. The judge warned potential jurors that the hours of fetish videos included violence against women, and many of them said they don't want to serve because watching would make them sick to their stomachs.

"It's the most extreme material that's ever been put on trial. I don't know of anything more disgusting," said Roger Jon Diamond - Isaacs' own defense attorney.

The case is the most visible effort of a new federal task force designed to crack down on smut in America. Isaacs, however, says his work is an extreme but constitutionally protected form of art.

"There's no question the stuff is disgusting," said Diamond, who has spent much of his career representing pornographers. "The question is should we throw people in jail for it?"

Isaacs, 57, a Los Angeles advertising agency owner who says he used to market fine art in commercial projects, calls himself a "shock artist" and says he went into distributing and producing films about fetishes because "I wanted to do something extreme."

"I'm fighting for art," he said in an interview before his federal trial got under way. "Art is on trial."

He plans to testify as his own expert witness and said he will cite the historic battles over obscenity involving authors James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence.

One of his exhibits, he said, will be a picture of famed artist Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain," a porcelain urinal signed by the artist in 1917.

Diamond said Isaacs also will tell jurors the works have therapeutic value for people with the same fetishes depicted on screen.

"They don't feel so isolated," Diamond said. "They have fetishes that other people have." (Ahh, it's a form of therapy!)

Isaacs makes a brief appearance in one of the videos he produced; others that he distributed were imported from other countries.

The business has been lucrative. At one point, he has said, he was selling 1,000 videos a month at $30 apiece. Then his office was raided by FBI agents who bought his videos online with undercover credit cards.

The government obtained an indictment against Isaacs on a variety of obscenity charges, including importation or transportation of obscene material for sale. Prosecutors have declined to comment about the case.

Jean Rosenbluth, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at University of Southern California, said such prosecutions were rare until the creation of the U.S. Department of Justice Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. Child pornography cases are handled by a separate unit.

"The problem with obscenity is no one really knows what it is," she said. "It's relatively simple to paint something as an artistic effort even if it's offensive."

The test of obscenity still hinges on a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which held that a work is not legally obscene if it has "literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

Jurors also are asked to determine whether the material in question violates standards of what is acceptable to the community at large.

"This task force was quite controversial and many in the Department of Justice felt that it was a waste of resources," Rosenbluth said. "Because of the pressure, they seem to have chosen the worst cases they can find to prosecute."

Each of the four counts against Isaacs carries a five-year maximum prison sentence. Prosecutors also are seeking forfeiture of assets obtained through his video sales. Two of the original six counts were dropped.

"A lot of this is about sending a message -- `Don't make this stuff. Don't put it on the Internet. We don't want it here,'" Rosenbluth said.

Rosenbluth said prosecutors would be emboldened to pursue similar cases if Isaacs is convicted, though there would be lengthy challenges on appeal.

In an unusual twist, the trial is being presided over by the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Alex Kozinski, under a program that allows appellate judges to occasionally handle criminal trials at the District Court level. Kozinski is known as a strong defender of free speech and First Amendment rights.

Eight men and six women were chosen for the jury Tuesday. Two will be designated alternates later. The panel was to hear opening statements Wednesday before viewing the movies.

When jury selection began Monday, he urged prospects to be open about their opinions and incurred an onslaught of negative statements. Within the first hour, he dismissed 26 men and women who said they could not be fair to the defendant because they were repulsed by the subject matter. By day's end, half the panel of 100 had been excused.

"I think watching something like that would make me physically ill, nauseous," said one woman. "It's affecting me physically now just thinking about it."

One man fired angry comments at the ponytailed Isaacs.

"Hearing stuff about feces made me sick and the defendant looks like my ex-business partner who did some of these things. He looks guilty as sin to me," said the man. "It turns my stomach thinking about it."

Several prospects marched up to the judge's bench for private conferences when he told them that the films also involved violence against women. They, too, were excused, as were several who cited their religious beliefs.

Asked how long they would have to watch the movies, Kozinski told them it would be about five hours and "I will be there watching with you. This is part of the job we're doing."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR2008061002449_pf.html

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I would imagine people who can defend sex with animals are only a half-step from defending sex with children. Just my opinion.

Poop and piss are wierd, but don't involve others.

November Rain

Firstly, does anyone know whether all of the footage is acted & consensual?

For instance, in the above quote, there's a lot of difference between genuine distress making the actress cry throughout (which would make one assume lack of consent) or her being paid to act distressed.

In the case of bestiality, I'd assume they might have more luck prosecuting him under animal welfare laws. Agree with many other members; bestiality is beyond the pale. Like Tex, I believe it close to paedophilia, perhaps because consent cannot be given (never mind my personal disgust at the practice).

Obviously I've never seen anything of the sort (Thank the Lord), but I've heard & believe that they truly are made.

As for the 'toilet training on film', not my cup of tea, but as long as the actors are of age & consensual, I don't really see a problem (as long as the images are not available to kids). Obscenity vs art? I guess one man's meat is another man's poison. Although, obviously Mr Isaacs prefers to be seen as an artist...

... this seems to be the bottom line as far as he's concerned.

I obviously don't know the laws, but I would have thought bestiality, paedophilia, snuff & the like would be best prosecuted under the relevant welfare laws (animal, child or murder ) and the other stuff being left alone.

__________________
It is far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.

Texpat

It's amazing the range some people are willing to stretch "freedom of speech."

The First Amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791. The Amendment states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Obscenity is one of several exceptions to this freedom. It seems the current trend is to protect that which doesn't