"This nadir of decadence...this feast of carrion and squalor...this Sodom and Gomorrah gone wild before the fire... this is one throat that deserves to be cut." With that, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Joel Tyler ruled: "I readily perform the operation in finding the defendant guilty as charged."
The defendant was Mature Enterprises Inc., operator of the World, a Manhattan skin-flick theater charged with promoting obscenity by showing the highly publicized Deep Throat (TIME, Jan. 15). Tyler's decision may not make legal historyit may well be overturned on appeal to a higher court but it was certainly noteworthy for its literary style. Although...
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