"Some of the grounds had to deal with sufficiency of the evidence in some of the charges," attorney Daniel Aaronson, who represented Hardcore's company MaxWorld Entertainment during the trial, told XBIZ. "Five of the counts were 'mail counts,' as they're called, using the mail for the distribution of obscene materials. Part of the charge requires that somebody be responsible for the mailing. Our belief is that the evidence showed that, in fact, MaxWorld Entertainment, Inc. — or Paul Little [Hardcore's real name], neither one of them — did any of the mailing, so they shouldn't have been found guilty of that."
Aaronson also told XBIZ that the motion said that the government did not show or prove "community standards." Also, a juror was fired from her job during the trial and the legal team was not informed of that fact — which may have affected the juror's vote — by the trial court, and another juror had comments made to them during the trial which may have affected the outcome of the trial.
"There was a communication from one of the jurors to us saying that 'this juror does not want to watch all the movies.' This was never delved into by the trial court as to whether the other jurors felt that way, whether they had discussed the case prior to the time they were allowed to deliberate and whether this juror had, in fact, infected the other jurors with his beliefs prior to the time of deliberation," Aaronson said.
He added that the jurors did not view all the movies in their entirety, "and we believe that that violates the Miller standard, which requires that everything to be taken as a whole."
The petition was filed earlier this week. Aaronson said that the government would respond to the petition and there would either be a ruling before Hardcore's scheduled sentencing on Sept. 5 or a hearing at that time.
