In late 1985 a fourteen-year- old California girl bought her younger brother the Dead Kennedys' album Frankenchrist, which included a foldout poster of Landscape #20, an artwork by Swiss surrealist painter H. R. Giger that depicts a bleak vista filled with stylized and disembodied genitalia engaged in copulation. When the girl's mother saw the poster, she complained to the state district attorney's office, which decided to prosecute the punk group's front man, Jello Biafra, and four others on charges of "obscenity based on potential harm to minors." Biafra countered that this action violated his First Amendment rights, especially since the album had carried a warning label about the artwork. Everyone saw something different in the poster. Prosecutor Michael Guarino saw dead body parts. Susan Baker of the PMRC saw "diseased genitalia engaged in anal intercourse." Biafra insisted that he intended the artwork, which...