UPDATE: Stag(liano) Film Not Obscene, Judge Rules

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It's getting harder and harder to find a good federal obscenity law prosecution in Washington, D.C. nowadays.

No sooner did the crack research team at "TUOL" report on the first such trial in a quarter-century advanced by federal prosecutors against adult film producer John Stagliano (see "TUOL" post 7/14/10) than U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon tossed the case before Stagliano's defense team opened its briefcases. Judge Leon ruled on Friday that the prosecution's evidence was "woefully insufficient" to persuade a jury that the defendants violated federal obscenity laws, according to accounts in The Washington Post and The National Law Journal.

Judge Leon was critical of the case brought by the U.S. Justice Dept.'s Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, which he said failed to connect the defendants to the production and distribution of Jay Sin's Milk Nymphos and Joey Silvera's Storm Squirters 2, the two allegedly obscene DVDs at the center of the case.

Stagliano joked with reporters that the abbreviated trial was bad for his autobiography.