Rebuffed by the Illinois and U.S. Supreme Courts, the operators of Zebulon Bookstores near Roselle gave up the court fight Tuesday and pleaded guilty to obscenity charges.
The decision came as a jury was being picked for an anticipated two-week-long trial.
Representatives of the bookstore at 24 W 777 Lake St. told DuPage County Judge Ann Jorgensen that they would accept a plea agreement offered by the state’s attorney’s office in which they would pay a $2,000 fine and agree to forfeit $8,000 in assets.
During the 1980s and up to 1991, law enforcement agencies frequently raided adult bookstore operations in DuPage County. Zebulon, Bachelor’s Library near Lombard and Ogden Adult Books in Downers Grove were frequent targets.
Ogden Adult Books lost its business lease several years ago and never reopened in DuPage County. Last year, the same happened to Bachelor’s Library. That left Zebulon as the last strictly adult bookstore in the county, authorities said.
When Zebulon was raided by state’s attorney’s investigators in 1991, authorities confiscated five magazines and 25 videotapes as examples of the material the store sold.
The case became the first in DuPage County that sought to take advantage of a state law written to punish such businesses for repeat offenses.
Under that law, if an adult business is found guilty a second time of obscenity, the state could seek to have the establishment forfeit some of its assets. Zebulon was convicted of obscenity in 1990.
Assistant State’s Atty. Alex McGimpsey said Tuesday the Illinois definition of obscenity “is material that an average person would find patently offensive and appealing to a prurient interest–that is, a shameful or morbid interest–in sex.”
The firm originally contended that the search warrant and the search by state’s attorney’s investigators were illegal. Efforts to have the U.S. Supreme Court and the Illinois Supreme Court throw the case out of court were fruitless.
Clyde DeWitt, the Beverly Hills, Calif., attorney for Zebulon, declined to comment on the decision to plead guilty and on the bookstore’s plans.
“Today’s actions speak for themselves,” he said.
According to previously filed legal papers, Zebulon is owned by several people in Southern California, but DeWitt declined to elaborate on the ownership.
Many communities in recent years have dealt with the adult bookstore issue through zoning laws intended to force the businesses to operate in industrial parks, removed from residential and public locations.
