Buckshot
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: ALABAMA
Posts: 5183 |
quote:
Originally posted by xforce6
ok you guys need to read the law itself it had NOTHING to do with hunting or fishing it was about dogfighting and "crush" videos it was for ANIMAL CRUELTY as defined by the LAW not the antis oppinion so hunting and fishing were never targeted and everyones saying if it was won wed be up spit creek well no we wouldnt this law was on the books for 11 years already
LOL, guess you haven't read the Supreme Court's ruling on why they struck down the law as being vague and unconstitutional. Had you read the Supreme Court's full ruling on this case, you would have read that hunting does come into play on the langauage of the law.
Starts on page 2 and carries on to page 3.
quote:
Moreover, §48 applies to any depiction of conduct that is illegalin the State in which the depiction is created, sold, or possessed, “re-gardless of whether the . . . wounding . . . or killing took place” there, §48(c)(1). Depictions of entirely lawful conduct may run afoul of the ban if those depictions later find their way into States where the same conduct is unlawful. This greatly expands §48’s scope, because views about animal cruelty and regulations having no connection to cruelty vary widely from place to place. Hunting is unlawful in the District of Columbia, for example, but there is an enormous nationalmarket for hunting-related depictions, greatly exceeding the demandfor crush videos or animal fighting depictions. Because the statute allows each jurisdiction to export its laws to the rest of the country, §48(a) applies to any magazine or video depicting lawful hunting thatis sold in the Nation’s Capital. Those seeking to comply with the lawface a bewildering maze of regulations from at least 56 separate ju-risdictions. Pp. 11–15.
Full text of Supreme Court's Ruling:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-769.pdf
What §48 is:
quote:
Ҥ48. Depiction of animal cruelty
(a) CREATION, SALE, OR POSSESSION.—Whoever knowingly creates, sells, or possesses a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both. …
(c) DEFINITIONS…1) the term ‘depiction of animal cruelty’ means any visual or auditory depiction, including any photograph, motion-picture film, video recording, electronic image, or sound recording of conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed, if such conduct is illegal under Federal law or the law of the State in which the creation, sale, or possession takes place, regardless of whether the maiming, mutilation, torture, wounding, or killing took place in the State…”
Chief Justice Roberts Opinion:
quote:
Roberts said the statute created a criminal prohibition of “alarming breadth.”
“A depiction of entirely lawful conduct runs afoul of the ban if that depiction later finds its way into another state where the same conduct is unlawful,” he said.
He noted that since hunting is illegal in Washington, D.C., the law would extend to “any magazine or video depicting lawful hunting, so long as that depiction is sold within the nation’s capital.”
Roberts rejected pledges by the government that federal prosecutors would only enforce the statute against acts of what it viewed as “extreme cruelty.”
“The First Amendment protects against the government; it does not leave us at the mercy of noblesse oblige,” Roberts wrote. “We would not uphold an unconstitutional statute merely because the government promised to use it reasonably.”
Here are other examples of what that means:
quote:
Here’s the problem the Court saw in the Stevens case. The statute purported to outlaw the depiction, sale or possession of depictions of certain activities if those activities were illegal in the particular state where the depictions were produced, distributed to or from, or possessed. The example the Court used [they could have chosen from many] was that depictions of legal hunting or trapping that involved injuring or killing an animal could be criminal under the statute. The United States has 56 jurisdictions, including the 50 states, the territories and Washington, D. C. Hunting is illegal in Washington D. C.
To illustrate the problem: if a person buys a hunting magazine in a Texas airport (hunting is legal in Texas), reads it on the plane and takes it with him when he deplanes in Washington, D. C. (where hunting is illegal), s/he would be subject to arrest and prosecution under federal law for entering Washington, D. C. with the magazine. Similar results could arise emailing such depictions to a person staying in a Washington, D. C. hotel on business. That would be distribution on one end and possession by the person at the hotel. The same could occur if one state allowed controlled buffalo hunts, but another state outlawed buffalo hunting.
Anyone depicting an animal being wounded or killed in any context would have 56 different jurisdictional laws to address to know where the depictions could or could not be depicted, distributed or possessed. Meanwhile, people in a restrictive jurisdiction like D. C. would be committing a federal crime based on conduct, which, if committed in Texas, would not be a federal crime. The law was deemed overbroad, on its face, and unconstitutional.
quote:
Congress wrote the law to make it illegal and punishable by up to five years in prison for the depiction of the killing or wounding of a live animal, if the act depicted was illegal in the state where the video or picture was sold. Safari Club International was among those filing a "friend of the court" brief in the case. They used the example of the sharp-tailed grouse which is legal for hunting in Idaho, but not in neighboring Washington. By the law--the videos of a sharp-tailed grouse hunt would be illegal in Washington. Closer to home, a similar example, it is illegal to kill an elk in West Virginia. Any videos of hunting elk in Colorado would be illegal here along with pictures in any magazine of elk hunting in other parts of the country. It's easy to see the slippery slope it would have created, a slippery slope animal rights groups were hoping for.
Advocates of the law argued hunting videos would be exempt because they fall under the "educational clause" to protect materials used for teaching about wildlife or instructional materials. SCI successfully argued the lion's share of videos of hunting were not educational, but were in fact for entertainment, marketing of hunting equipment, and a recruiting tool to increase hunter numbers in the country.
Last edited by Buckshot on 04-21-2010 at 09:04 PM
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04-21-2010 03:08 PM
