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"Afraid of public trial, author to plead guilty in online obscenity case"

"Afraid of public trial, author to plead guilty in online obscenity case": The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette yesterday contained an article that begins, "She battled the federal government's allegations for more than a year and a half, but in the end, Karen Fletcher's mental health will win out over her principles. And First Amendment lawyers will lose a key chance to have a court determine whether text-only material can be considered obscene. Ms. Fletcher has decided to plead guilty to six counts of distributing obscenity online stemming from fictional stories published on a members-only Web site. First Amendment lawyers thought an acquittal in the case could have begun a trend -- proving that text-only cases do not rise to the level of obscenity standards."

I wrote about the case in the October 9, 2006 installment of my "On Appeal" column for law.com, headlined "Text This: Words Alone Can Violate Federal Obscenity Laws."

Full post as published by How Appealing on May 18, 2008 (boomark / email).