criminal like Davis, with his record of violence and
callousness, could have merited parole.
As a result of such questions, a wave of laws were
passed by various states in the 1990’s requiring the
imposition of lengthy jail terms on offenders who
had been previously convicted of multiple violent
crimes. These were known as the three strikes laws,
borrowing a term from baseball, indicating that con-
victs would be given a limited number of chances be-
fore facing mandatory lengthy prison sentences.
Further Reading
Bortnick, Barry.Polly Klaas: The Murder of America’s
Child.New York: Pinnacle Books, 1995.
Domanick, Joe.Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Poli-
tics of Crime in America’s Golden State.Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 2004.
Michael R. Meyers
See also Crime; Ramsey murder case; Three strikes
laws.
Knox pornography case
The Event A series of court reviews that tested
definitions of child pornography
Date October 11, 1991-June 9, 1994
The federal court system, amid the heated political atmo-
sphere of the midterm elections of 1994, revisited the legal
definition of child pornography as it applied specifically to
photography.
In 1991, during a warrant-search of the apartment of
Stephen Knox, a history graduate student at Penn
State who had been twice convicted of possessing
child pornography, agents recovered commercially
made videotapes of female teenage models ostensi-
bly in fashion poses. Although the girls, ages ten to
seventeen, were not nude (they wore bathing suits,
leotards, and underwear), were not posed, and were
not engaging in sexual acts, Knox was arrested and
subsequently, on October 11, 1991, convicted of pos-
sessing child pornography, the court citing that the
images frequently lingered on the genital area. How-
ever, given the definition of child pornography up-
held by courts since the mid-1980’s as the “lascivious
exhibition” of the genitals of anyone under eigh-
teen, Knox appealed his conviction. The United
States Court of Pennsylvania upheld the lower
court’s ruling (they cited photos in which upper
thighs were exposed), and Knox received a five-year
prison sentence. His subsequent appeal, to the
Third Circuit United States Court of Appeals, was as
well denied in October, 1992.
When Knox took his case to the Supreme Court
in the fall of 1993, however, U.S. solicitor general
Drew Days argued that the genitalia needed to be ex-
posed to qualify as “lascivious exhibition.” When the
Supreme Court agreed on November 1, 1993, and
remanded the decision to the Third Circuit Court, a
political firestorm was ignited as the narrowed inter-
pretation would exclude much child pornography
from prosecution. Challenged by a vociferous right-
wing coalition, the Senate, within three days, voted
100-0 on a nonbinding censure against the Clinton
Justice Department (later, in April, the House voted
a similar censure). An embattled President Bill
Clinton—feeling the first resolve of the political rev-
olution in which conservatives would claim both
houses of Congress in an historic midterm election
later that year and seeing the political hazards of his
administration being viewed as soft on child porn—
sent a reprimand to his attorney general, Janet
Reno, calling for a tougher definition of child por-
nography. On June 9, 1994, under considerable me-
dia scrutiny and public pressure, the Third District
Court rejected Days’s argument. Later, after the
midterm elections, the Clinton Justice Department
reversed its position on Knox, although there was
speculation on the level of disagreement within the
department over that reversal.
Impact The contentious response over the Knox
ruling ignited a national debate over the definition
of child pornography, raising thorny questions
about what constitutes legitimate commercial mod-
eling and what constitutes exploitative material tar-
geted for pedophiles. Amid a polarized political en-
vironment, the courts concluded essentially that
photographs were actions not representations pro-
tected by First Amendment free speech and conse-
quently could be restricted.
Further Reading
Hixson, Richard F.Pornography and the Justices: The Su-
preme Court and the Intractable Obscenity Problem. Car-
bondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.
Nathan, Debbie. Pornography. Toronto: Ground-
wood Books, 2007.
Joseph DeweyThe Nineties in America Knox pornography case 489