CBLDF to take on manga obscenity case

Date: 2008 October 17 15:20

Posted by Azure

The comic book legal defence fund has agreed to take on the case of Christopher Handley. Handley has a collection of over 1,200 manga a handful of which the US government claims is obscene and contain images of minors involved in sex acts.

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The case began in 2006 when a postal inspector intercepted a package ordered by Handley. The inspector applied for a search warrant after determining that the package contained cartoon images of objectionable content. Hadley then picked his package up unaware it had been searched, he was followed home by law enforcement who seized his entire collection of manga, DVDs, laser disks and computers.

A jury will now have to look at the offending manga and decide if it is classed obscene under the following criteria:

"(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."