People State New York v. Saul Heller

The appellants in each of these cases were convicted of misdemeanors because of their violations of section 235.05 of the Penal Law, which prohibits the promotion or production of obscene material. We have treated with the Heller case previously, deciding that the film "Blue Movie" was obscene within section 235.00 of the Penal Law, the statute which defines the meaning of obscenity (People v. Heller, 29 N.Y.2d 319). We also decided in that case that it was proper for a judicial officer authorized to issue warrants, who had viewed the film and found it obscene, to issue a valid warrant for the films seizure as evidence in a prosecution against the exhibitor, without first conducting an adversary hearing on the issue of probable obscenity.