I think that the typical statement about Bruce is that "he wasn't prosecuted for obscenity, he was prosecuted for his political views, for speaking truth to power," stuff like that.
But the actual indictments read "obscenity."
From a law school project -- Bruce's actual words used here:
>>A performance at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco on October 4, 1961 resulted in Bruce's first obscenity arrest and trial. The arresting officer took special issue with Bruce's use of the word "cocksucker." In addition to focusing on the use of that word, Bruce's 1962 trial considered Bruce's use of the phrase "to come" in a sexual sense and his story about his father exposing himself and hanging a sign from his penis, "When we hit $1500 [in ticket sales for Bruce's show], the guy inside the ticket booth is going to kiss it." The defense tried to demonstrate that Bruce's sketch was not offensive in the very liberal community of the district in which the Jazz Workshop was located, that Bruce's comedy was socially important (the defense compared Bruce to Aristophanes, Rabelais, and Jonathan Swift) and did not appeal to the prurient interest of the arresting officer or anyone else. In the end, the jury agreed and acquitted Bruce on the obscenity charge.
The San Francisco trial proved to be the beginning, not the end, of Bruce's legal troubles. In October 1962, Bruce was arrested following his show at the Unicorn in Los Angeles. Less than two months later he was charged with violating an Illinois obscenity statute during a performance at the Gate of Horn in Chicago, and six weeks after the Chicago arrest, Bruce faced obscenity charges for a show at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. As if Bruce didn't have enough on his legal plate, in February, 1963, Bruce was arrested on a narcotics charge in California during a recess in his Chicago trial. (In June 1963, Bruce entered the State Rehabilitation Center in Chico, California for treatment of drug addiction resulting from amphetamine prescriptions for lethargy apparently caused by a bout of severe hepatitis during his Navy service.)
Tried in abstentia in Chicago, an all-Catholic jury found Bruce guilty of violating state obscenity laws after one hour of deliberations. According to prosecution evidence, Bruce had held up a picture of a naked woman and said, "God, your Jesus Christ, made these tits." He also was accused of using the words "fuck" and "smuck" and of suggesting that if we lost World War II, "they would have strung Truman up by the balls." Finally, witnesses accused Bruce of mocking the Catholic Church. In March 1963, the Chicago judge (also a Catholic) sentenced Bruce to one year in jail. He remained free on bond, however, during his appeal. (In July 1964, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed Bruce's conviction, finding his speech protected by the First Amendment.).
On April 1, 1964, four New York City vice squad officers attended Bruce's performance at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. The officers arrested Bruce and owner Howard Solomon following Bruce's 10:00 P.M. show. Assistant District Attorney Richard Kuh presented a grand jury with a typed partial script of Bruce's performance including references to Jackie Kennedy trying to "save her ass" after her husband's assassination, Eleanor Roosevelt's "nice tits," sexual intimacy with a chicken, "pissing in the sink," the Lone Ranger sodomizing Tonto, and St. Paul giving up "fucking" for Lent. The jury indicted Bruce on the obscenity charge. The trial before a three-judge court in New York City that followed stands as a remarkable moment in the history of free speech. Both the prosecution and defense presented parades of well-known witnesses to either denounce Bruce's performance as the worst sort of gutter humor or celebrate it as a powerful and insightful social commentary. Among the witnesses testifying in support of Bruce were What's My Line? panelist Dorothy Kilgallen, sociologist Herbert Gans, and cartoonist Jules Feiffer. In the end, the censors won. Voting 2 to 1, the court found Bruce guilty of violating New York's obscenity laws and sentenced him to "four months in the workhouse."
Ronald Collins and David Skover, in their book The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon, describe the downward spiral brought on by Bruce's legal problems:
The obscenity busts took their toll. They wore him down, trial by trial, dollar by dollar, year after year. Between 1961 and 1966, he gradually became a pathetic caricature of the Time magazine man he once was. From the Nehru to raincoat to denim jacket periods, he took more drugs and more chances. Now, the law was his main routine.
On June 25, 1966, the bankrupt Bruce gave his last performance, at the Fillmore in California. Five weeks later, on August 3, 1966, police and press converged on his Hollywood Hills home. Lenny Bruce was dead of a morphine overdose. He was found lying naked, except for trousers gathered at his ankles, on his tiled bathroom floor. Near his body was a syringe, a burned bottle cap, and various narcotic instruments. <<
law.umkc.edu
Excerpts from various legal opinions:
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