THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 8, 1994 TAG: 9410080300
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LYNN WALTZ AND MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
Eight citizens recruited by a prosecutor to help set community standards in recent obscenity cases were all white Protestants, including five members of the same Methodist church and a former city councilman who led an anti-smut campaign in the 1970s.
Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Albert Alberi sought out the eight citizens to help him in cases against stores selling sexual aids. In similar cases elsewhere, prosecutors attempt to choose their community-standards consultants from a broad section of the community.
The former city councilman, Charles Gardner, is a former lay minister in the Methodist Church. The five members of the same congregation - the Virginia Beach United Methodist Church - are Charlotte Vester, Barbara Mastic, Roy Gordon, John Eiban and Virginia ``Ginny'' James.
The other two people chosen by Alberi were Debra Eib and Floyd Dormire, a retired advertising executive with The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star. Both are Episcopalians.
Alberi identified the eight in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for the names. The names were attached to an Oct. 3 letter to Cole Campbell, editor of The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star.
Alberi subpoenaed the eight citizens for a trial at the end of September. To protect their identities, Alberi said in the letter, he did not file copies of the subpoenas in Circuit Court. Defense attorneys alleged that by doing so he violated a state statute.
The eight were not called as witnesses in the first obscenity case against Louis Krbec III, who pleaded guilty in September. Krbec owned three shops, which, as part of his plea agreement, he agreed to sell. Three other cases against other merchants are pending.
In the letter to Campbell, Alberi wrote that he ``overlooked filing the copies'' of subpoenas and called the violation ``an error in judgment on my part. The failure to file was an oversight.''
Alberi said he was trying to ``protect both the prosecution's opportunity and the defendant's right to get a fair trial from a deliberate, concerted effort by your reporters to affect the outcome of the case, not merely report on it.''
Paul Lipkin, a lawyer who represented Krbec and one of the three remaining defendants, said: ``I don't know how they could say this limited group could express the opinion of the community as to the community standard. The thought that the community is so tightly bound, religiously, churchwise, colorwise, is shocking.''
Less than 37 percent of Virginia Beach residents regularly attend church, according to a 1990 survey by Glen Mary Research Center of Atlanta. Four percent of the population is United Methodist, and 20 percent of the population are minorities.
In March, city police seized sexual aids from six stores after citizens complained, Alberi said. In May, Alberi approached the Church in Society Committee of the Virginia Beach United Methodist Church at the Oceanfront in May, asking for volunteers to serve as community-standards consultants.
Alberi told members of the church that he was going after the sexual aids as a way to get rid of literature and films protected under the First Amendment, said Charlotte Vester, chairwoman of the committee.
``He said there are lawyers traveling the country defending pornographers and they're very slick and he didn't want to jump through the First Amendment hoops so he had decided to just go after the items,'' Vester said. ``He said they might find evidence of child pornography.''
Vester said she did not have a problem with five of the eight coming from her church.
``Demographically, I see Virginia Beach as a conservative community, so I don't think that going to a church group is out of bounds at all,'' Vester said. ``He was probably looking for people who were concerned.''
Vester said she would serve again, but called the experience ``shocking.''
``These items were totally outside the realm of my experience,'' Vester said. ``The packaging just blew me away.''
Vester said she was standing up for what she believed in when she volunteered. She said there were other issues that concerned her more but that cleaning up the social atmosphere at the Oceanfront was a concern.
Alberi told the group that authorities try to clean up the Oceanfront every two or three years ``just to keep the lid on it and keep it under control,'' Vester said.
``It's not the hope of wiping out pornography completely in Virginia Beach, but the message was: We need to keep this under control so it doesn't spread all over the Oceanfront.''
The Oceanfront is home to one of the merchants, Pam O'Berry-Adams, who owns Tara Thunder. O'Berry-Adams said that when she was granted a business license to open her clothing and novelty store at the Oceanfront, no one objected.
But the legal case against her has financially ruined her personal and business finances, she said. Police confiscated $15,000 in merchandise from her in the March raids, she said.
Later, her landlord refused to renew her lease. She is moving the store to Witchduck Road.
``These people, whoever they are, don't know what they are doing to me,'' O'Berry-Adams said. ``They've ruined my business. My marriage is on the rocks because of this and I am almost ready to go down the tubes.'' MEMO: [For a copy of the letter from deputy commonwealth's attorney, see page
B2 of The Virginian-Pilot for this date.]
ILLUSTRATION: Charles Gardner, who led an anti-smut campaign in the 1970s, was
one of eight people who helped determine community standards in a
Virginia Beach obscenity case.
KEYWORDS: OBSCENE MATERIALS COMMUNITY STANDARDS by CNB