Cashier at Staunton porn shop indicted
In December, the Hook reported on the case of Rick Krial, the owner of Staunton adult video store After Hours Video who faces eight felony obscenity counts after undercover police purchased 10 DVDs from his establishment. Now, the cashier who sold police those DVDs has also been charged.
On Wednesday, Staunton Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Robertson indicted Tinsley Embrey on six felony and four misdemeanor counts. A hearing has been set for Tuesday, February 5 at 8:30am, a month and a day before Krial’s own re-scheduled hearing for pretrial motions on Thursday March 6 at 10:30am.
Calls to Robertson for comment were not returned at the time of this post, but the prosecutor told the Staunton News Leader that he charged the cashier because “He knew what he was selling.” The article also states that Krial will foot the legal bill for Embrey, although there’s no word yet on whether Larry Flynt attorney Paul Cambria will represent both After Hours’ owner and its employee.
“In the obscenity cases we’ve done, I don’t recall any of the clerical staff ever being charged,” says Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. “If you target the owner of the store, then the store goes away. If you target an employee who has little to no decision-making power over what items are for sale, it just means more work for the prosecution to achieve the same goal.”
In another development, the U.S. Department of Justice has become involved in the After Hours case. DOJ attorney Matthew Buzzelli will serve as co-prosecutor in Commonwealth v. Krial, though the federal government has not announced any indictments of its own against Krial or any of his employees. Robertson didn’t explain to the News Leader why Buzzelli has joined him except to say, “They’re interested in how we do here.”
This strikes Willis as odd. “That seems unusual,” he says. “I don’t know why the federal government would be involved, unless they’re making this a higher priority and inviting themselves.”
Buzzelli is part of the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force within the Department of Justice. Among Buzzelli’s accomplishments is a 2007 conviction of Brazilian fetish porn producer Danilo Simoes Croce for conspiracy to mail obscene materials, in which he reached a plea deal that stipulated a six-month prison sentence and a $98,000 fine for distributing Croce’s possibly stomach-turning scatalogical brand of adult videos. Croce gained notoriety when people filmed others’ reactions to his “Two Girls, One Cup” video and it became a YouTube phenomenon. A YouTube search for “one cup reactions” yields 6,110 hits.
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I don’t get it. If you don’t like or don’t need what they sell, don’t go there.
There was an important story out of Augusta today, however. Some cows got loose.
Does anyone know the BASIS of the obsenity charge? Underage? etc? How does this differ from the stores that provide adult entertainment material in Charlottesville and the many other cities in VA? I haven’t been following this article, but it seems a little obsurd to me and that the political body in Staunton is so concerned with the sexuality of consenting adults. Makes me wonder if they in the pockets of a religious group and I would love to know how many of them sought materials there themselves.
Porn Man Ray Robertson should be disbarred for his abuse of power. He cannot win in court and he is doing nothing more than legally harassing honest and innocent citizens. Maybe Ray could go and investigate those cows that got loose and demonstrate to his constituents the true value of his legal skills.
Golfer, keep this case in the back of your mind for a decade or so. With the frequency at which public figures are being arrested for perverted sex related charges, some people involved in this prosecution probably have about a 2% to 5% chance of being arrested themselves sooner or later. It’s just like all these cops nationwide being arrested for drunk driving…. after one their most noteworthy accomplishments at work has come to be that of DUI enforcement.
The term above, “public figures”, includes attorneys, preachers, cops, firemen, and various government management employees on the local, state and federal levels. Just the amount of cops being arrested nationwide on a daily basis is beyond belief.
See http://www.badcopnews.com
Just scroll down the entire main screen once there. Take special notice of the amount of cops involved in sex scandels too. And those involved in kiling and maiming people while driving drunk, often driving drunk in department issued vehicles even.
Don’t think it can happen around here locally? Please remember the 2nd in command at the Albemarle County Police Department was arrested for soliciting juveniles for sex on the Internet not too long ago. Who’s to say next time it might not be a federal or city prosecutor? Perhaps a prosecutor going after somebody for selling a porn video. Scary, isn’t it?
What were the obscenity charges for? Was he selling discs he shouldn’t be? I own a shop and have never gotten anything from a distributor we can’t legally sell…but maybe if he’s making his own or something there is issues? There is a certain amount of social responsibility that I know alot of shops don’t care about, apparently this is one of em~