United States v. Handley

In May 2006, postal inspectors attained a search warrant for the home of 38-year-old Iowa comic collector Christopher Handley, who was suspected of importing "cartoon images of objectionable content" from Japan. Chase argued, "there are no actual children. It was all very crude images from a comic book." This was related to obscenity charges involving pornography depicting minors, being applied to a fictional comic book. On this, Chase said, "This prosecution has profound implications in limiting the First Amendment for art and artists, and comics in particular that are on the cutting edge of creativity. It misunderstands the nature of avant-garde art in its historical perspective and is a perversion of anti-obscenity laws." Charles Brownstein of the CBLDF commented: "The government is prosecuting a private collector for the possession of art. In the past, CBLDF has had to defend the First Amendment rights of retailers and artists, but never before have we experienced the federal government attempting to strip a citizen of his freedom because he owned comic books." ==Trial==

United States district court Judge James E. Gritzner was petitioned to drop some of the charges, but instead ruled that two parts of the PROTECT Act criminalizing certain depictions without having to go through the Miller test were unconstitutionally overbroad. Handley still faced an obscenity charge. The motion was initially heard on June 24, 2008, but was not widely publicized prior to the Fund's involvement. CBLDF board member Neil Gaiman remarked on how this could apply to his work ''The Doll's House'', saying, "if you bought that comic, you could be arrested for it? That's just deeply wrong. Nobody was hurt. The only thing that was hurt were ideas." ==Sentencing==

Handley entered a guilty plea in May 2009; at Chase's recommendation he accepted a plea bargain believing it highly unlikely a jury would acquit him if shown the images in question. In February 2010, under the terms of plea, Handley was sentenced to six months in jail. Without the plea, he would have faced a maximum of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Upon release he was required to undergo three years' supervised release and five years' probation. Under the plea agreement, he is excluded from being required to register as a sex offender. ==See also==