Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 18, 1995                   TAG: 9501180056
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS CHILD-PORNOGRAPHY CONVICTION

The court's action, taken without comment Tuesday, left intact a Pennsylvania man's conviction for buying videos that focused on the clothed genital areas of girls aged 10 to 17.

Stephen A. Knox contended he could not be convicted of possessing child pornography because the girls were not nude. He had been prosecuted under a federal law banning ``exhibition'' of a child's genitals or pubic area.

``Steve has been sacrificed to the emotions of the time,'' said his lawyer, Alan Silber. ``I firmly believe that politics certainly controlled the administration's position.''

In other action, the court:

Let stand a ruling in a Virginia case that said prison guards who use unnecessary force against inmates are not guilty of imposing cruel and unusual punishment if they cause only minimal injury.

Heard arguments in a California case over states' power to pay lower welfare benefits to newcomers from other states.

Rejected a St. Louis humor magazine's appeal of a ruling that said a mock advertisement it published violated Anheuser-Busch's Michelob trademark.

Turned down a New Jersey man's bid to require Germany to pay him $17 million for his suffering in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

The pornography case had been to the Supreme Court before. The justices agreed to review Knox's appeal last year, but sent it back to a lower court after the government redefined of child pornography.

Initially, Justice Department lawyers had urged the high court to reject Knox's 1993 appeal. But after the court agreed to hear Knox's appeal, and after Drew Days took over as solicitor general, the government changed its position. Days and other government lawyers said in court papers that the appeals court used an ``impermissibly broad standard'' for defining child pornography.

Conservatives accused the Clinton administration of being soft on pornography. The high court, citing the government's changed view, sent the case back to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Knox's conviction.