"There's a reason Staunton doesn't have an AIDS epidemic," says Staunton Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Robertson. "We're a decent, moral community."
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO
Staunton's war on pornography began in December with felony indictments against After Hours Video owner Rick Krial. Now, the a cashier who sold police porno DVDs has also been caught up in the dragnet.
On Wednesday, January 23, Staunton Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Robertson indicted Tinsley Embrey on six felony and four misdemeanor counts of obscenity.
Why has Robertson decided to charge the man behind the counter when he's already indicted Rick Krial, the man behind the store?
"It's not really fair to charge the owner of the store and let the guy who actually sold the obscene material off the hook," Robertson says. "He knew the general nature of the material, and he's admitted to the police that he was hired to sell porn."
Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, doesn't see this prosecutorial tactic very often.
"In the obscenity cases we've done," says Willis, "I don't recall any of the clerical staff ever being charged. 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."
Robertson says this is the last set of indictments he intends to hand down in the case.
"Nobody else sold the videos," says Robertson. "On the four occasions undercover agents bought videos, three times they bought them from this guy Embrey, and the other time it was Krial himself."
Robertson won't be the only prosecutor trying that evidence. Matthew Buzzelli, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, will join Robertson as co-prosecutor in the After Hours Video case, although the federal government has not announced any indictments of its own against the Manassas-based Krial or any of his Staunton employees.
"The Justice Department called me because this has been getting some national media coverage and offered one of their attorneys," explains Robertson. "They're going after porn on the Internet and through pay-per-view, so they're very interested to see how we do here."
Robertson says he welcomes Buzzelli's help, especially considering that Krial's co-counsel is Paul Cambria, a man who's made a career defending the likes of shock rocker Marilyn Manson, gangsta rapper DMX, and the king of porn himself, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.
"I don't have a great deal of familiarity with these kinds of cases, because we've never had an adult video store in town," says Robertson. "They other side is bringing in their A-Team, and having an attorney from the Department of Justice who's experienced in obscenity cases evens up the odds."
Buzzelli did not return the Hook's calls for comment, but an online search finds that among the federal prosecutor'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 mainstream notoriety when people filmed others' reactions to his "Two Girls, One Cup" video. At press time, a YouTube search for "one cup reactions" yielded 5,830 hits.)
While Robertson concedes the material After Hours sells is more sex than toilet, he says it's not any less criminal.
"In just about every one of these things, you'll see one guy inserting his penis into a woman's vagina, and another guy inserting his penis into her anus, and then that guy puts it in her mouth, again, and again, and again," he says. "The message you get from this stuff is that unprotected sex with strangers-- multiple strangers, even-- is okay."
If the obscenity of a store like After Hours goes unchecked in his city, Robertson says, he worries about the Queen City's future.
"There's a reason Staunton doesn't have an AIDS epidemic," says Robertson. "We're not like Las Vegas or San Francisco where they've got these problems. We're a decent, moral community, and when I see this coming, I revile at it."
Robertson says he will move then to have Embrey and Krial tried together. Embrey's hearing has been set for Tuesday, February 5 at 8:30am, and Robertson is adamant about charging the clerk.
"I'm convinced this is the right thing to do," says Robertson. "He should have to face the music along with his employer."
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