Ferris J. Alexander, SR. v. United States (509 U.S. 544)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 28, 1993 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 509 U.S. 544 · 113 S. Ct. 2766
- Decided
- June 28, 1993
- Term
- October Term 1992
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Rehnquist
- Issue area
- First Amendment
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court. After a full criminal trial, petitioner Ferris J. Alexander, owner of more than a dozen stores and theaters dealing in sexually explicit materials, was convicted on, inter alia, 17 obscenity counts and 3 counts of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The obscenity convictions, based on the jury’s findings that four magazines and three videotapes sold at several of petitioner’s stores were obscene, served as the predicates for his three RICO convictions. In addition to imposing a prison term and fine, the District Court ordered petitioner to forfeit, pursuant to 18 U. S. C. § 1963 (1988 ed. and Supp. Ill), certain assets that were directly related to his racketeering activity as punishment for his RICO violations. Petitioner argues that this forfeiture violated the First and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution. We reject petitioner’s claims under the First Amendment but remand for reconsideration of his Eighth Amendment challenge. Petitioner was in the so-called “adult entertainment” business for more than 30 years, selling pornographic magazines and sexual paraphernalia, showing sexually explicit movies, and eventually selling and renting videotapes of a similar nature. He received shipments of these materials at a warehouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they were wrapped in…
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