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Man Indicted for Distributing Explicit Videos

Dallas- A former business partner of an ex-Dallas police officer and his wife who were convicted last year in a rare federal obscenity case has been indicted on a series of similar charges.

Clarence Thomas Gartman and two others were indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Dallas, accused of several charges related to what authorities say was a conspiracy to sell obscene material.

The indictment states that Mr. Gartman, 33, a former Arlington resident who now lives in Canada, operated a Web site that sells what prosecutors describe as obscene videos depicting rapes.

In addition to conspiracy, Mr. Gartman and another Canadian man, Brent Alan McDowell, 35, are charged with transporting and mailing obscene material. Lou Anthony Santilena, 30, of Henderson, Nev., faces charges of conspiracy and mailing obscene material.

Beginning in 1998, Mr. Gartman and Mr. McDowell operated the Web site, and Mr. Santilena began working with them in 2002. Visitors to the site could purchase “obscene” CDs, DVDs and streaming video that depicted rapes and sexual torture, federal prosecutors say.

Similar videos were the focus of a four-day trial last fall in which the former officer and his wife, Garry and Tamara Ragsdale, were convicted of conspiracy to mail and mailing obscene material to customers who visited their Web site, titled The Rape Video Store.

The couple worked with Mr. Gartman until early 1998, according to a news release from Dallas-based U.S. Attorney Jane Boyle, whose office is prosecuting the case with the help of the Justice Department’s obscenity section.

Attorneys for Garry and Tamara Ragsdale, who were sentenced respectively to 33 and 30 months in federal prison, argued during the trial that the videos did not violate contemporary community standards – determined by a three-part U.S. Supreme Court test for determining obscenity.

In obscenity cases, jurors are asked to weigh whether material appeals to prurient interest, depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

One of the Ragsdales’ defense attorneys, Clint Broden of Dallas, also cited during the trial the videos sold by Mr. Gartman, who at the time was not charged, arguing that the prosecution was unfair.

Mr. Broden said the indictment of Mr. Gartman shows that perhaps the government is exercising prosecutorial discretion more fairly. He said Mr. Gartman got the Ragsdales “involved in all this.”

“It seems a step in the right direction, I suppose,” he said.

Still, Mr. Broden said he questions why the government targets small-time distributors while, he said, ignoring large corporations, such as hotels and cable companies, who make huge profits selling pornography.

“They are going after little people,” he said.

Mr. Ragsdale, who joined the Dallas Police Department in 1990, was arrested July 1998, after vice officers bought videos from the Web site.

He was fired from the department a short time later. State obscenity charges were soon dropped. The case remained dormant until 2002, when the Justice Department under new Attorney General John Ashcroft asked federal authorities to resume an investigation.

The couple remain free on bond pending an appeal.

 

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