Monfred v. State

Hammond, J.,

filed the following dissenting opinion:

The opinion of the Court in this troublesome case is essentially syllogistic: the Maryland statute proscribing the sale of obscene books and magazines is to be construed as broadly as the Supreme Court will permit; the case of Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 1 L. Ed. 2d 1498, held that obscenity is not protected by the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and press, and said that material is obscene if, to the average person, applying contemporary community •standards, “the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole…