Larry Flynt Indicted For Obscenity

CINCINNATI - Once again, it's the People vs. Larry Flynt.

The Hustler magazine publisher, who beat an obscenity rap once before, was charged again yesterday for videos - not his magazine.

Flynt and his brother, Jimmy, were indicted on 15 felony counts, including selling obscene videotapes to a 14-year-old boy, engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity and conspiracy to engage in a pattern of corrupt activity.

If convicted of all charges, the Flynt brothers would face up to 24 years in prison.

"They threw everything at me but the kitchen sink," Flynt said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "Hustler today is more explicit than the issues they prosecuted me on 20 years ago. But (County Prosecutor Joseph Deters) still doesn't want to tackle Hustler because he doesn't think he can get a conviction under the law."

Flynt has been down a similar road in Cincinnati, in the case detailed in Milos Forman's 1996 movie "The People vs. Larry Flynt." In 1977, a Hamilton County jury found Hustler obscene and convicted Flynt of pandering obscenity. He served six days of a seven- to 25-year prison sentence, and the conviction was overturned on appeal.

Flynt has said he wants another trial on obscenity charges because he believes a jury today would find that Hustler does not violate community standards. He said being cleared would make it easier for him to persuade other retailers to sell Hustler in Cincinnati, where for years shopkeepers did not stock it out of fear of prosecution.

Last year, Flynt handed out free copies of Hustler downtown and then opened the only sex shop in town: his Hustler Books, Magazines and Gifts store, which offers videos, sex toys and Hustler along with mainstream publications.

Above the entrance, Flynt put up one of his favorite quotations: "Freedom . . . is not for the thought you love the most, but for the thought you hate the most."

Prosecutors did nothing - until a 14-year-old boy allegedly bought an obscene video in Flynt's store, sold it to a friend and bragged about the purchase. The boy then went to police, who sent him into the store twice to buy materials, Deters said. The indictment also charged that the Flynt brothers distributed materials showing explicit sexual conduct.

Flynt said yesterday his company has a policy of not selling adult materials to juveniles.