Mural Artist Challenges Sentence
by TChris
Ed Stoss and his lawyer are both in trouble with the law. Stoss was given a 30 day sentence because the City of Roseville, Michigan doesn't appreciate the mural he painted on the outside of his studio.
Stross, whose mural is a take on Michelangelo's "Creation of Man", depicts Eve with bare breasts and has the word "love" written on it. City officials say they gave the 43-year-old artist permission to paint on the wall but explicitly told him he couldn't use letters or paint genitalia. ... In sentencing Stross on Thursday, Judge Marco Santia also put Stross on probation and ordered him to pay a fine and cover up the breasts and the word "love."
The punishment seems ridiculous for an artist who is only exercising his freedom of artistic expression (and who wishes to express a concept as inoffensive as love), a point that his new lawyer, Carl Marlinga, hopes to make. Marlinga also hopes to persuade the court that breasts are not, in fact, genitalia.
Unfortunately, Marlinga, a former county prosecutor, has problems of his own: he's facing a federal criminal prosecution for campaign finance violations, charges that were brought against him before he entered private practice.
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