Winters v. New York
| Winters v. New York | |
|---|---|
| Argued March 27, 1946 Reargued November 19, 1946 Reargued November 10, 1947 Decided March 29, 1948 | |
| Full case name | Winters v. People of State of New York |
| Citations | 333 U.S. 507 (more) |
| Case history | |
| Prior | Defendant convicted and appealed to the New York Supreme Court and Court of Appeals of New York, which upheld conviction. |
| Holding | |
| A New York Penal Code statute that forbade the publication of literature "made up of news or stories of criminal deeds of bloodshed or lust" was so vaguely applied that it violated the First Amendment, as applied to the states through the 14th Amendment. New York Supreme Court and Court of Appeals of New York reversed. | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Reed, joined by Black, Douglas, Stone, Murphy, Rutledge |
| Dissent | Frankfurter, joined by Jackson, Burton |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. XIV, U.S. Const. amend. I | |
Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507 (1948), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that a section of New York Penal Law that banned the publication of periodicals dealing in criminal deeds was vaguely applied enough to violate the First Amendment vis-a-vis the Fourteenth Amendment. The case later played an important precedential role in cases dealing with bans on the sale of literature, such as Butler v. Michigan, and provided important First Amendment defenses for comic books and other literature that was criticized during the 1950s.
Background
Subsection 2 of §1141 of the New York Penal Law held that distribution of periodicals "principally made up of criminal news, police reports, or accounts of criminal deeds, or pictures, or stories of deeds of bloodshed, lust or crime" was grounds for a misdemeanor conviction.[1] Murray Winters, a New York City newsdealer, was convicted under this provision for selling a true-crime tabloid named Headquarters Detective.[2] He appealed his conviction to both the New York Court of Appeals as well as the New York Supreme Court, which both upheld his conviction. The New York Supreme Court upheld his fine, comparing the magazine negatively to Charles Biro and Lev Gleason Publications' Crime Does Not Pay.[2] The Authors League of America and the American Civil Liberties Union filed amicus briefs urging the reversal of Winters' conviction.[3]
Opinion of the Court
The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, overturned Winters' conviction. Justice Stanley Forman Reed delivered the opinion of the court, which recognized the importance of state police power to reduce crime but ultimately held that the statue was too vague and would potentially outlaw the sale of war stories.[4]
Frankfurter's dissent
Justice Felix Frankfurter penned a dissent joined by Robert H. Jackson and Harold H. Burton, which mainly objected to the wide-ranging precedent set by the case that he felt would invalidate many similar laws across the country. He and the other dissenting justices felt that New York was within its rights to regulate the publication of crime stories as it did.[5]
Later cases
Winters provided a precedent that protected non-obscene literature and comic books from censorship.[6][7] At the time of the decision, Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915), which ruled that the First Amendment did not apply to the film industry, was still in effect and would not be ruled unconstitutional until Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson in 1952. A National Lawyers Guild brief filed in Burstyn v. Wilson cited Winters as well as the earlier case Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc. to challenge the constitutionality of the New York law under question in that case, stating that, between those two cases, "[the Supreme Court] repudiated the proposition that the freedom of the press may be denied communications [sic] originated for the purposes of entertainment."[8]
The case also affected United States jurisprudence regarding state definitions of obscenity by mandating that these laws be more concretely worded. United States jurisprudence regarding obscenity would undergo a major change with the landmark Roth v. United States case in 1957.[9]
References
- ^ "Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507 (1948)". Justia Law. Retrieved 2025-07-01.
- ^ a b Hajdu, David (2008). The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 91–93. ISBN 978-0-374-18767-5.
- ^ 333 U.S. 507
- ^ 333 U.S. 520
- ^ 333 U.S. 540
- ^ Green, Jonathon; Karolides, Nicholas J. (2014-05-14). Encyclopedia of Censorship. Infobase Publishing. pp. 627–628. ISBN 978-1-4381-1001-1.
- ^ Nyberg, Amy Kiste (1998). Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-1-60473-663-2.
- ^ "Extracts from Briefs to the United States Supreme Court in Burstyn v. Wilson, et al". Lawyers Guild Review. 12 (2): 82–87. 1952 – via HeinOnline.
- ^ Moore, Kristin R. (2023). "Illustrated, Incitive, and Indecent: Comic Censorship and the Effort to Stem Youth Corruption". Documents to the People. 51 (4): 10–17 – via HeinOnline.
External links
- Works related to Winters v. New York at Wikisource
- Original text of the decision at the Library of Congress