Man jailed for criticizing court system has been acquitted by jury | Hacker News Reader

Man jailed for criticizing court system has been acquitted by jury

reason.com

40 pointswallace_f4 comments

I am so happy to hear that he's been acquitted. This was posted on HN after it happened:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20881509

It made me really angry then, and I think it's both hilarious and sad that it took the jury less than half an hour to rule on such an obvious case.

"Judge Lucido replied that there were "limits" to free speech. When Somberg asked Lucido to clarify which of the Facebook posts presented to the court were threatening, Lucido said that they 'alluded' to the judge and did not explain his reasoning any further.

Lucido raised Vanderhagen's bond to $500,000, an amount Somberg told Reason was tantamount to a bond "you would expect for a murderer or rapist.""

Seems like an obvious abuse of power. I hope there are consequences, but cynical me doubts it. At the very least, it shows a good legal precedent and I hope will guide future case law.

I studied a fair bit of free speech literature in college. Based on my reading of the article, I would have a hard time seeing his comments pass first amendment scrutiny with enough lawyering.

What part, in your opinion, isn’t covered by the first amendment?

Rereading my comment now, it looks a bit confusing. I would think that it would be hard for the state to convict him. Generally a threat must pass a higher standard of scrutiny when directed at a public official. E.G. a judge.[1] Threading to dig up skeletons in the courts closet, while not very nice, doesn’t suggest that the guy intended to cause physical harm to the judge and is well within the realm of political banter. Even the case report didn’t find intent of physical harm to the judge. Also, there was a guy a couple years ago that made much more threading remarks on social media that the Supreme Court said were ok. [2]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_threat

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States

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