A federal judge has fined a Connecticut mail-order company $500,000 on its guilty plea to a felony charge of mailing unsolicited, obscene materials into Utah.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Lambert said his office is pleased with the fine, which he said may be the largest ever imposed for an obscenity conviction.But U.S. District Judge Thomas Greene did not give the prosecutors everything they hoped for.
The judge reiterated his previous rejection of an agreement the Justice Department had signed with Consumer's Marketing Group Ltd. to get the company's owner, Avram Freedberg, to drop a civil lawsuit that had held up numerous federal pornography prosecutions nationwide.
Greene said the agreement is not in the public interest. He said he believes it grants immunity to employees and affiliated companies of Consumer's Marketing in addition to keeping Freedberg out of prison.
Freedberg and his company had originally been indicted on multiple counts in cases filed by the U.S. attorneys in Utah, Mississippi and Delaware. He responded with a civil suit and won an injunction that cast doubt on similar multistate anti-pornography prosecutions in several other cases nationwide.
The Justice Department then entered an agreement with Freedberg whereby he would drop the civil suit and have his company plead guilty to a single count in each of the three states, turn over its inventory of obscene materials and cooperate in other government investigations.
In return, the government agreed to drop all charges against Freedberg as well as the additional charges against his company.
But Greene would not approve the settlement and refused to dismiss the indictment. So the U.S. attorney's office filed a separate, one-count criminal information, which is the case in which Consumer's Marketing entered its plea Friday.
Greene reiterated his refusal to dismiss the indictment and offered to let the company withdraw its guilty plea, but it declined to do so. The company has also entered pleas in Delaware and Mississippi and is awaiting sentencing.