Robert J. Stevens, an author and small-time film producer who presented himself as an authority on pit bulls, compiled and sold videotapes showing dogfights. Though he did not participate in the dogfights, he received a 37-month sentence under a 1999 federal law that banned trafficking in "depictions of animal cruelty."
District Court Public Law No: 106-152 was a federal criminal statute that prohibited the knowing creation, sale, or possession of depictions of
cruelty to animals with the intention of placing the depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain. The law had been enacted in 1999, primarily to target "
crush videos," which depicted people crushing small animals to gratify a
sexual fetish. It excluded from prosecution "any depiction that has serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value." The language tracked the "
Miller test," used by the U.S. Supreme Court to determine whether speech could be prosecuted for obscenity or was protected by the First Amendment. In 2004, Stevens was indicted under 18 U.S.C. § 48 for creating and selling three video tapes, two of which depicted
pit bulls engaged in
dog fighting. The third tape depicted a pit bull attacking a domestic pig as part of the dog being trained to catch and kill wild hog and included "a gruesome depiction of a pit bull attacking the lower jaw of a domestic farm pig." Although Stevens' criminal prosecution concerned only three tapes, he had made $20,000 in two and a half years from selling nearly 700 videos. Stevens was not accused of engaging in animal cruelty himself or of shooting the original footage from which the videos were created. However, the footage in each of the videos "is accompanied by introductions, narration and commentary by Stevens, as well as accompanying literature of which Stevens is the author." In January 2005, Stevens was convicted by a jury, after a deliberation of 45 minutes.
Third Circuit Stevens appealed, and the
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated his conviction, holding that 18 U.S.C. 48 violated the First Amendment. The court stated that dog fighting and the use of dogs to hunt hogs may be made illegal to protect animals from cruelty.
Review by Supreme Court The government asked the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn the appellate court ruling by appealing the case to the High Court. On April 20, 2009, the Supreme Court agreed to review the lower court's decision. Oral arguments in the case were heard on October 6, 2009. Stevens' attorney, Washington, D.C., lawyer
Patricia Millett, has written: In June 2009 the
Animal Legal Defense Fund filed a brief in defense of the animals' interests. The brief encouraged the Court to recognize the protection of animals as a compelling government interest and to uphold Section 48. More than a dozen media outlets joined an
amicus brief in support of Stevens, including
The New York Times,
National Public Radio, the
American Society of News Editors, the
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies,
Citizen Media Law Project,
MediaNews Group, the
National Press Photographers Association, the
Newspaper Association of America, the
Newspaper Guild–
Communications Workers of America,
Outdoor Writers Association of America, the
Radio-Television News Directors Association, the
Society of Environmental Journalists, and the
Society of Professional Journalists. ==Decision==