Dute had been originally convicted in October of 2002 for selling a series of homemade videos in which she had sex with multiple partners.
The video were marketed on a website that ridiculed Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis, who had a history of prosecuting adult entertainment purveyors and won the first obscenity trial against Hustler Publisher Larry Flynt.
In May 2003, the Ohio 1st District Court of Appeals overturned the original conviction, finding that Dute’s right to a fair trial had been jeopardized because the trial judge had refused to allow jurors to see videos similar to Dute’s that were considered “not obscene.”
At the time, Dute’s attorney had argued that the videos were no more obscene than other videos sold in Ohio stores and that the real reason behind the obscenity charges was because Dute had intentionally humiliated the sheriff on her website.
Because Dute had already served seven months of her year-long sentence at the time her conviction was overturned, she won’t be required to spend any more time in jail.
