August 16th, 2009
Shock jock faces charges for threatening judges
So here is this wacko, Hal Turner, a shock jock and blogger, who advocated the assasination of three Seventh Circuit federal judges. He’s being charged with threatening the judges’ lives. The way The Washington Post spins this story, there’s some interesting question of where free speech ends and criminality begins.
To me, it’s not a close case at all. Turner’s speech blatantly attempted to incite others to murder the judges. Take a look.
“Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed,” Turner wrote on his blog (under review by Google) on June 2, according to the FBI. “Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions.”
The next day, Turner posted photographs of the appellate judges and a map showing the Chicago courthouse where they work, noting the placement of “anti-truck bomb barriers.” When an FBI agent appeared at the door of his New Jersey home, Turner said he meant no harm.
Turner called the judges — including Posner and Easterbrook, two of the nation’s most prominent conservative jurists — “unpatriotic, deceitful scum.” He said the only thing standing in the way of the judges and “the government” achieving ultimate power “is the fact that We The People have guns. Now, that is very much in jeopardy.”
And there is more. He referenced the murders of the husband and mother of U.S. District Judge Joan H. Lefkow, who were murdered in 2005 by a disgruntled plaintiff. Wrote Turner:
Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed. These judges deserve to be made such an example of as to send a message to the entire judiciary: Obey the Constitution or die.”
The Post says the case is “likely to test the limits of political speech at a time when incendiary talk is proliferating on broadcast outlets and the Internet…” Hardly. I agree with Prof. Martin Redish at Northwestern Law.
I would give very strong odds on a thousand bucks that once he said that stuff, it takes it out of any kind of hyperbole range. I just don’t see him being protected.
