The much ballyhooed trial of Rick Krial, owner of After Hours Video on Springhill Road, begins this morning in Staunton Circuit Court, almost a year to the day Staunton Prosecutor Raymond C. Robertson vowed at a press conference to keep pornography out
of Staunton's stores.
In October, the same month After Hours Video opened for business, undercover agents from the Staunton and Waynesboro police departments, along with plainclothes officers from the Virginia State Police, acted as customers and
purchased a dozen DVDs from the Springhill Road store. Weeks later, a special Staunton grand jury convened and charged Krial and his company, LSP of Virginia, with 16 felonies and eight misdemeanor charges of obscenity.
In January, an employee at
After Hours Video, Tinsley W. Embrey, also was charged with 10 counts of obscenity, four of them misdemeanor charges.
This week's scheduled four-day trial concerns only the misdemeanor charges against Krial, his company and Embrey. The
Commonwealth can proceed with the felony charges only if it garners convictions on the misdemeanors.
The landmark United States Supreme Court case of Miller v. California in 1973 established a standard three-part legal definition of obscenity
that must be met: Do applied community standards find that the material appeals to the prurient interest; is it patently offensive, sexual conduct defined by state law; and does the work, taken as a whole, lack serious literal, artistic, political or
scientific value? Those are questions that must be answered by the jury.
The court case will feature a number of legal heavy hitters, Paul Cambria Jr and Louis Sirkin.
Robertson will be assisted by Matthew Buzzelli, an obscenity attorney
with the United States Department of Justice.
Jury selection for the case could take up to two days. A misdemeanor trial only requires seven jurors.
Jurors in the case of After Hours Video convicted store owner Rick Krial and the After Hours Video store on misdemeanor charges of selling an obscene item. Krial was fined $1,000 and the store was fined $1,500.
In response to a defense motion the
judge agreed that the guilty verdicts will not be entered for 60 days while post-trial motions are filed. An appeal is expected.
Krial and the store were found not guilty on a second charge of obscenity, and store employee Tinsley Embrey was
found not guilty on two misdemeanor charges of obscenity.
The misdemeanor convictions may lead to prosecutions on felony obscenity charges that were handed down along with the misdemeanor counts.
Basing their argument on bad evidence and bad statements introduced during the trial of After Hours Video storeowner Rick Krial, defense attorneys have filed motions asking to have the two guilty verdicts set aside.