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Porn Trial Judge Reserves Right To Spike Convictions

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 3, 2008

TAMPA - A federal judge this morning left open the possibility that if a jury convicts a movie producer of criminal obscenity charges, the judge may overturn at least some of the convictions.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew reserved decision on a motion by defense attorneys that she acquit defendant Paul Little, who uses the name Max Hardcore, of five of the 10 charges against him. Those charges allege he sent obscene materials through the U.S. mail.

The defense argued that the government had not presented any evidence that Little knew his distribution company was using the U.S. mail, as opposed to another delivery service.

"This is a substantial issue," the judge said. "I am going to reserve." She said she will issue her ruling after the jury either returns a verdict or announces it is unable to return a verdict.

The ruling will not affect the outcome of five other charges that Little sent obscene material through the Internet.

The defense began presenting its evidence this morning, including a psychologist who testified about the existence of deviant sexual subgroups whose activities involve vomiting and urination. The videos the prosecution charges are obscene involve depictions of those activities.

The defense also presented a private investigator, George Scott, who testified about doing Internet searches of topics such as vomiting porn videos and other activities depicted in Little's films.

Two searches turned up more than 1.7 million pages, which exceeded the number of hits when he searched for "American Idol" winner David Cook with the word "video" and Jon Gruden and "video." The only search he performed that had results exceeding all the deviant sex terms was "Rolling Stones" and "video," he said.

Scott also testified about the contents of several videos he and his associate purchased in the Tampa Bay area similar to the videos involved in this trial.

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