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Knox County officials, adult store square off

GRAY, Ky.- Each time someone strolls into the Knox County adult bookstore that Leanna Philpot manages, she wonders if she is headed for jail.

Her concern is that, while some communities use zoning laws and protests to close adult businesses, Knox County has taken a different tack with the Dreamworld bookstore:

Sheriff’s deputies arrested Dreamworld owner Jeree Mills and cashier Belinda Brown on misdemeanor charges of selling material May 14 in violation of state obscenity laws.

The arrests had the intended effect, closing the southeastern Kentucky store for three weeks.

Mills reopened Dreamworld on June 3 on the advice of her lawyer, who has represented Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and is a veteran of First Amendment cases involving adult entertainment.

The Dreamworld staff is on the frontline of an intensifying conflict in Kentucky and across the nation between what is obscene and where adult entertainment businesses can legally open.

Philpot said that deputies overreacted when they arrested Mills and Brown and added that people should have the right to decide for themselves if they want to shop at Dreamworld.

“I don’t understand why they arrested anyone,” Philpot said. “But business is better now than it was when we first opened.”

Knox County Chief Deputy Sheriff Carl Bolton said his office is still “in the process of consulting” with the county attorney about how to handle the situation.

Sheriff John Pickard said reaction to the store from residents led him to make the arrests. “We just heard a lot of negative things about the store,” he said. “I don’t think a place like that is good for the community.”

In Northern Kentucky’s Kenton County, the county attorney has prosecuted several criminal cases against the owners of adult bookstores. All were resolved through plea agreements that closed the stores.

“We don’t permit those kinds of activities,” Kenton County Attorney Garry Edmondson said. “Generally the juries in Northern Kentucky are very sensitive to that.”

Jefferson County Attorney Irv Maze said his efforts to go after adult businesses by enforcing county zoning regulations have been hampered by aggressive defense lawyers who “throw everything at you” to drag cases out for years.

In Eastern Kentucky, cases involving the legality of adult bookstores have been rare. Last year a Harlan County man had obscenity charges against him dropped after converting his adult novelty store into a Bible bookstore. And several years ago in Laurel County, an adult novelty store’s owner was allowed to stay in business under certain sale restrictions.

Knox County officials admit they are scrambling to familiarize themselves with obscenity laws.

“What’s obscene to one person is not obscene to another,” county Judge-Executive Raymond Smith said. “It’ll be a learning experience for us.”

Mills put up the Dreamworld sign late one Sunday night along the Cumberland Gap Parkway, not far from three churches and several schools. The community of Gray, with only several hundred residents, is off four-lane U.S, 25E 175 miles southeast of Louisville and about 10 miles from Interstate 75.

After Mills posted bond, she feared being arrested again if she reopened the store, which is open 24 hours a day except Sunday and advertises the sale of movies, magazines, gifts, tools, leather and antiques.

Pickard said the store, between Barbourville and Corbin, also sold sexual devices, but he declined to say what items his department bought during its undercover raid.

Mills and Brown are scheduled for a pretrial conference in Knox District Court on June 29. Both women face a maximum of one year in prison and a $500 fine if convicted.

Mills, 58, insisted that the store doesn’t sell any “hard-core stuff” and no one younger than 18 is admitted. She said she opened the store in her home county because she saw it as a good business opportunity.

Mills said she spent three years looking for land where she could set up business and has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in Dreamworld.

“There weren’t any stores like that in the vicinity,” Mills said.

Brown, 38, reached by telephone at her Corbin home, declined to comment, saying only that “there’s not really anything to say until I go to court.”

Mills’ lawyer, Louis Sirkin of Cincinnati, said that his clients plan a vigorous fight and that Knox County won’t fall prey to the “intimidation and fear” that prosecutors have established in Northern Kentucky.

“I think Americans better wake up and realize pieces of their liberties are slowly being taken away,” Sirkin said.

Phil Burress, president of the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, a group vocal in its opposition to adult stores, said rural areas including Knox County have a more difficult time fighting such businesses because they lack the financial resources and legal experience to win in court.

“They generally like to open up by highway intersections and pick poorer communities and wear them out,” Burress said. “If the prosecution doesn’t seek help, he’ll get beat.”

Knox County Attorney Charley D. Dixon declined to comment on the case.

County officials share a personal distaste for Dreamworld but differ on the eventual outcome of the legal battle.

“Personally I think it’s trash and filth,” said Knox County Magistrate Giulio Cima, whose back yard is within yards of Dreamworld. “It’s not hard for me to say it’s not legal, and it won’t be accepted in this community.”

Thelma Smith, a Gray resident, praised the police action.

“But I don’t see a lot of reason to spend county money to run this up to the Supreme Court,” Smith said. “The sad part is that it’s not going to be tried like most people want it to be, in the court of public opinion. It’ll be in a court of law.”

Leonard Lester, a pastor at First Advent Christian Church in Barbourville, said the court of public opinion already has spoken.

Lester, who was in a crowd of about 200 people outside the county courthouse the day Mills and Brown were arraigned, referred to Dreamworld as “a major invasion in our community.”

“Most people in Knox County desire very much that our county be a family-friendly county, and an adult bookstore is anything but family friendly,” Lester said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that adult materials are a form of expression protected under the First Amendment but that communities can limit such businesses through zoning regulations.

The Supreme Court also provides these guidelines to determine whether material is obscene: Would someone using contemporary community standards find the work vulgar, the sexual content in the work extremely offensive, and the work lacking in literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

That means what is deemed not obscene in Louisville may be obscene in Gray. “We’ll figure out what the real community standards are,” Sirkin said.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys who have been involved in such cases said they are not aware of any national statistics that track the conviction rate.

Sam Marcosson, a University of Louisville law professor whose specialties include constitutional law, said obscenity cases are unusual because prosecution hinges on the “vague question” of what is offensive or obscene to a particular community.

“I can’t think of an area where community standards play such a role,” Marcosson said. “The jury is put into the position of having to be the voice of what are the community standards of decency.”

In Jefferson County, the enforcement of zoning regulations has become the preferred method of handling such cases, Maze said.

“Zoning is the cleanest and clearest shot to win this battle,” said the county attorney, who added that his office has 150 active cases involving adult businesses. “I see this as a simple land-use code.”

Zoning regulations in Jefferson County include restricting adult establishments from opening within 500 feet of schools and places of worship, selling alcohol, displaying flashing lights, and operating during certain hours.

Maze said he has a harder time prosecuting such cases when the issue of constitutionally protected speech is involved.

But he said his cause would be helped by a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this month that upheld the legality of zoning ordinances and affirmed the need for prompt judicial review of cases where First Amendment concerns are raised.

In Knox County, which has no zoning regulations, prosecutors are going after Dreamworld using state obscenity laws, Judge-Executive Smith said.

The county originally intended on using a local ordinance to try to shut down Dreamworld but later found its wording largely duplicated the state obscenity law, he said.

Mills, who operates another adult bookstore in Hickman County, Tenn., said that she is pleased that the Knox County store has reopened.

“People should have the choice to come here or not,” Mills said. “No one has to come in if they don’t want to.”

 

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