As we've noted here, a long and expensive prosecution of comic book retailer Gordon Lee finally ended recently with all charges being dismissed. It was costly for the city of Rome, Georgia to put Lee on trial and costly for Lee and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to get the case tossed outta court, where it never should have been in the first place.
When a prosecutor loses a case, it doesn't automatically mean that they were wrong to press it in the first place but there are also Bad Faith prosecutions, and cases where the "corrective" is grossly out of proportion to the alleged crime. Did Leigh Patterson, the Floyd County district attorney who pushed this matter and kept it going so long and with so many examples of prosecutorial misconduct, actually believe she was punishing a genuine wrong? If so, she was wrong.
But it seems likely that she was even wronger than that; that she knew it was a trivial matter, unworthy of the courts, and went forward because it seemed like an easy win, a way to beat up on a little guy who — had the CBLDF not come to his aid — would not have been able to mount much of a defense.
Prosecutors like to go after putative pornographers, especially when they can claim to be protecting children. Those are generally easy cases to win — a lot simpler than corporate crime or peddling illegal weaponry or even most crimes of violence — but you have to pick your targets carefully. In most cities, one can view X-rated movies on the in-room TV sets at the Marriott or Hyatt or Holiday Inn, and surely minors occasionally catch a glimpse or two. But no one ever prosecutes the Marriott. The Marriott has money. You can see lots of dirty movies on DirecTV, and kids do on occasion, but no one suggests handcuffing John Malone, chairman of the company that owns DirecTV. Why? Because John Malone has a couple billion dollars with which to hire good lawyers. It's a lot easier to go after someone like Gordon Lee who, had it not been for the CBLDF, would not have much of a defense.
In this editorial, the hometown newspaper of Gordon Lee and Leigh Patterson laments what a case like this does to the image of their city and adds, "The only true offense has been to the sensibilities of local taxpayers." They're right, and we shouldn't let the fact that Mr. Lee is free mean that this case can be forgotten. Because tomorrow, some other prosecutor will be looking for a quick victory as the protector of the tiny tots. And that prosecutor will go after someone else they think can't fight back.