30
box 4/11
Casanovas Heinfahr
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25
and salacions or obscene publications the tend¬
ency of which is to excite lustful and lecherous
desire.
No other meaning could be given to the words
used in the statute and maintain the most essen¬
tial attribute to our criminal law—predicability.
For it is predicability more than any other factor
that makes justice according to law preferable to
justice withont law.
In judging the three books involved herein I do
not take into consideration the intent of the de¬
fendants in publishing and circulating them. In¬
tent is not an element of the offense under section
1141. Therefore the absence of bad intent or the
presence of good intent is immaterial. The statute
makes the selling or the possession with intent to
sell an obscene or indecent book a misdemeanor.
However, while the intent of the defendant is
immaterial, the motive, as disclosed by the book
itself from a reading of it, is material (People v.
Muller, supr.; Halsey v. New York Society for the
Suppression cf Vice, supra). That is if from a
reading of these books any or either discloses a
motive that is not 'naturally calculated to incite
in a spectator impure imaginations'' they are not
banned by the law.
Mere extracts separated from their context, se¬
lected paragraphs or pages taken by themselves, do
not constitute eriteria of whether the books are ob¬
scene and indecent within the meaning of the stat¬
ute. The book must be judged as a whole (Halsey
v. N. V. Society for the Suppression of Vice, de¬
cided bythe Court of Appeals, reported in the N. V.
Law Journal July 22, 1922; St. Hubert Guild v.
Quinn, 118 N. V. Supp. 582).
In the recent case of Halsey v. New York Society
for the Suppression of Vice the court, in dealing