IN THE END, the only thing Leigh Patterson, the Floyd County district attorney, could do to Gordon Lee after more than three years of trying was turn him into a comic-book hero.
Originally charged with six counts, including two felonies, after a child was inadvertently given a free handout comic containing nudity in a Halloween Broad Street giveaway, the case against Lee was down to two misdemeanors when dismissed in return for a written apology — which Lee had been willing to do all along.
After one mistrial and numerous delays, the owner of Legends Comics winds up looking invincible and a national free-expression celebrity to boot (the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund raised more than $100,000 nationally on his behalf). Ms. Patterson, in turn, earned descriptions in national media as a sort of vindictive dark force and Floyd as an evil empire.
The comic in question, Alternative Comics No. 2, depicted a naked Pablo Picasso in full frontal view.
NOT TO SHOCK Ms. Patterson, or give her another cause for action, we saw the same thing in the flesh (though not Picasso) in an HBO prime time feature recently and suspect quite a few minors did, too, given this was in the context of a patriotic American history presentation. Watching it might even have been a school assignment for some.
Greater Romans, who probably paid this case only limited attention — it’s certainly been eclipsed by the similar long-lasting war against the Entice Adult Store — largely don’t know how much of a new black eye this case has given them. Not only has it been featured in The New York Times and Publishers Weekly, but when the dismissal was announced from the podium at the big New York Comics Con gathering, it brought cheers both long and loud.
According to the defense fund, it filed a motion to dismiss on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct last winter that eventually led to the district attorney’s office offering to drop the case in return for an apology. (It was, by the way, an employee who made the actual mistake and not Lee.)
HOW MUCH TIME and money this silly prosecution cost Floyd County taxpayers will probably never be known. How much it has added to the misconception of Greater Rome as the last redoubt of the blue noses is hard to gauge.
If a true, deliberate attempt to taint the morality of children were involved it might be a different matter. However, this was a mistake, pure and simple, no different than thinking by shape and size that one was handing a child a thin mint for Halloween when it was actually a condom.
An apology, three and a half years ago, should have been enough to end it then, instead of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even more words in the national press, having to be expended.
The only true offense has been to the sensibilities of local taxpayers.
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