It turns out that Chris Cooper -- the artist who created that sticker that a New Mexico D.A. says is obscene-as-to-minors -- is a regular reader of this blog (which I hadn't known). He e-mails:

As the artist who created the artwork in question, I'm more than a little interested in this case, and I'm very worried that the person in question might get thrown in the klink for having a sticker on his car. That just doesn't seem like something that should happen in the USA. I hope that your analysis of the statute is one that is shared by the court.

An unsurprising reaction, of course, but I figured that since I had something straight from the horse's mouth, I'd pass it along.

I blogged about this prosecution earlier this week; my view was that the accused simply wasn't guilty of a crime under New Mexico law, at least under that portion of New Mexico law -- distribution to minors or display to minors of obscene-as-to-minors materials -- that was being discussed.

Ruth Waytz, the wife of the artist who drew the allegedly obscene-as-to-minors sticker, now reports:

Dean Young's case was dismissed this morning, but the judge did so Without Prejudice, which means the NM authorities are still free to file other charges against him in the future. Not sure what those other charges might be . . . .

Maybe Young did something else that actually was a crime, but my sense is that he's off the hook for the sticker.