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Thursday, June 28, 2007

Ind. Courts - Federal trial involving what constitutes illegal speech on the Internet goes to jury today

Joe Carlson of the NWI Times has been covering an interesting trial in federal court this week - here is a complete list of stories. The trial, in U.S. District Court in Hammond, involves "Vikram Buddhi, an Indian national who has lived in the United States for more than a decade while attending engineering classes at Purdue University," according to this story from June 20th:

Prosecutors say that on three occasions in December 2005 and January 2006, Buddhi posted messages in Yahoo! Finance message boards urging Iraqi militants to kill the president and other government figures and to attack Americans.

"Kill GW Bush ... Rape And Kill Laura Bush ... Kill Donald Rumsfeld The Old Geezer Crook ... Rape And Kill The Anglosaxon Republicans," Buddhi wrote Dec. 15, 2005, in a message board devoted to chatter about the technology company JDS Uniphase.

Martin has said that although the speech was admittedly crude and offensive, it was protected by the First Amendment because the messages were intended as a protest of the Iraq War, not "true threats" that Buddhi intended someone to carry out.

Martin already has tried to convince Moody to dismiss the case on First Amendment grounds, but the judge ruled that only a jury could decide what Buddhi's true intentions were in posting the messages.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Benson disclosed in court files that he intends to argue at trial that Buddhi's attempts to use other Purdue students' Internet Protocol addresses to conceal his online identity is evidence of his guilt.

Although the advanced engineering student used other people's IP addresses, Purdue eventually connected Buddhi with the postings using a second type of digital identifier called a Media Access Control address.

"Buddhi's use of stolen IP addresses to conceal his computer's identity is no different from a defendant who uses a false ID to hide his identity while committing a crime," Benson wrote.

From the June 26th story on jury selection:
Asked about Internet use, only one of the initial 15 jurors said he had ever read an Internet blog. [U.S. District Judge James Moody] even said he did not know what a blog was.
Reporter Carlson's June 27th story relates that Secret Service Special Agent Wade Gault, on April 13th, arrested Buddhi and:
had search warrants executed on his apartment. In recent e-mails to prosecution witnesses, Gault wrote, "This case is very important and it could lay a new foundation of what is free speech and what is not."

Buddhi has argued his comments are political protest and protected by the First Amendment.

Gault said the law is clear that such threats against the president's life are illegal.

"Those are statements that as far as I know have always been prosecuted by the Secret Service," Gault said in court Tuesday. "If it was determined by this court that you could say those words and not be prosecuted, that would be something new."

At issue are five messages Buddhi posted to Yahoo! financial message boards in December 2005 and January 2006, three of which bore the headline, "Call for the assassination of GW Bush."

Gault said the long delay in arresting Buddhi came because Yahoo was slow in responding to subpoenas, and because Purdue computer experts had to take time to unravel Buddhi's method of disguising his identity.

Today's story reports:
HAMMOND | Vikram Buddhi, charged with using Internet forums to call for the killing of President Bush, put his fate in the hands of an obscure New York stock analyst Wednesday.

Buddhi's attorneys are hoping that a scalding series of insults hurled at Bank of America analyst Jonathan Jacoby in an online forum in 2005 can help them prove the point that nasty communication is common on the Internet. * * *

"It should be illegal speech," said Texan Hayward McMurray, a prosecution witness who first reported Buddhi's comments to the Secret Service. "I don't consider free speech as calling for the rape and murder of anyone."

Defense attorney John Martin has argued that the comments never were intended as true threats, but rather a part of a crude protest of the Iraq War.

McMurray said he had never seen anything so shocking in an online forum before.

But in a surprise move Wednesday, Martin said his legal team had just discovered other vicious messages on the same financial news forum, posted minutes after the Dec. 13, 2005, message that led McMurray to complain.

The messages called for Jacoby to be mugged and murdered because he downgraded his rating of a satellite radio stock. The message writers said Jacoby's family should be murdered in front of him and that he should be raped by a gang of men.

After trying unsuccessfully to convince U.S. District Judge James Moody not to admit the new evidence, Benson said the messages were irrelevant. And because of the late notice, the government had not had time to investigate whether the people who wrote the messages had been prosecuted.

Buddhi is an Indian national who has lived legally in Indiana for more than a decade while attending advanced math and physics classes at Purdue University in West Lafayette. He was charged with 11 crimes for posting the five messages.

Secret Service Special Agent Wade Gault has said the Buddhi case is significant because it could set a new legal precedent for what constitutes illegal speech on the Internet.

Closing arguments are scheduled this morning.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 28, 2007 09:26 AM
Posted to Ind. Trial Ct. Decisions