Dog-fighting videos at heart of Supreme Court case

WASHINGTON —  In an unusual clash between free speech and an animal cruelty law, the Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the government can make it a crime to sell videos of dogs fighting or animals being mauled.

The high court said it will rule on the case of Robert J. Stevens, a Virginia man who was convicted of selling videos of pit bulls fighting. He had advertised his videos in Sporting Dog Journal, which the government described as an underground publication that reports on illegal dogfights.

One gruesome scene showed the dogs ripping the jaw off of a pig.

Stevens mailed the videos to federal agents in Pittsburgh in 2003, and he was the first person prosecuted under a new federal law against depictions of animal cruelty. A jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to three years in prison.

Last year, however, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia voided his conviction and ruled the federal law unconstitutional on 1st Amendment grounds. The judges said that although animal cruelty is illegal, depictions of animals being cruelly treated are protected as free expression. In a brief filed last month, Stevens’ lawyers said he was devoted to training pit bulls and insisted he “does not promote illegal dog fighting.”

Government lawyers had urged the high court to hear the case.

“Graphic depictions of the torture and maiming of animals” have no “redeeming societal value,” they said in their petition.

But critics of the measure said it is too broad and potentially could make it illegal to broadcast scenes of hunting or bullfighting.

All 50 states have laws against animal cruelty and dog fighting. In 1999, Congress moved to combat an underground trade in videos that showed dogs viciously fighting each other and mauling helpless animals.

Sponsors of the law said they were also concerned about “crush videos” which portray women in bare feet or high heels stomping on tiny animals. These were said to appeal to a “sexual fetish.”

The measure made it a crime to make, sell or own images of “animal cruelty” for the purpose of making money. It referred to depictions of a living animal being “intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed” when such conduct would be illegal. It included exceptions for depictions that have serious religious, scientific, educational or artistic value.

In their appeal, government lawyers said the federal law was needed to halt the trade in dog-fighting videos. “Depictions of animal cruelty . . . are unworthy of 1st Amendment protection,” they said. Arguments are scheduled for the fall.

In another case, the court agreed to rule on whether prosecutors can be sued for “manufacturing and fabricating” evidence used to convict a defendant.

In the past, the justices have said prosecutors are immune from being sued for their actions in courts. But a judge in Iowa said it was a different matter if prosecutors were involved in manufacturing evidence.

The ruling came in the case of two men who were convicted of the murder of a security guard, but later freed. They then sued the two former county attorneys for presenting false evidence against them.

A federal appeals court rejected a request to throw out the suit, but the high court said Monday it would hear the prosecutors’ claim of immunity.

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david.savage@latimes.com