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Friday, June 29, 2007
Ind. Courts - More on: Federal trial involving what constitutes illegal speech on the Internet goes to jury today
Updating yesterday's ILB entry, Joe Carlson of the NWI Times reports today:
HAMMOND -- After an afternoon of deliberations, a federal jury Thursday convicted Vikram Buddhi of 11 counts of using the Internet to threaten American leaders and the nation's infrastructure.Buddhi, an Indian national who has spent a decade studying at Purdue University in West Lafayette, never disputed writing online messages such as, "Call for the assassination of GW Bush."
Rather, the jury in U.S. District Court in Hammond was asked to decide whether Buddhi's comments were true threats or part of a crude online protest of the Iraq War that should be protected by free speech rights.
The jury ruled that a reasonable person reading Buddhi's messages online could conclude that he intended to harm the president, the vice president, their wives and the secretary of defense, and to blow up various power plants and methods of mass transit. * * *
Buddhi never took the stand in his three-day trial, and the defense offered only one witness, an attorney who had located other threatening messages on the same financial news message board Buddhi used.
Secret Service Special Agent Wade Gault testified the case would have set a new standard for speech if Buddhi had not been punished for exhorting assassination. * * *
Defense attorney John Martin argued crude political banter is common on Internet message boards, and Buddhi had no actual intention of harming anyone.
"Where does it say Mr. Buddhi is going to kill the president, the vice president? It doesn't. These comments are posted in the context of the debate about the Iraq War," Martin said.
"You have to look at what was going on in the world at that time."
Martin compared Buddhi's remarks to a comment that commentator Ann Coulter made this week, wishing that presidential candidate John Edwards would be killed by terrorists.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Benson said Buddhi must be held accountable for the words he chose to write on his computer and publicly post for anyone in the world to read.
"What is this? Is the Internet the wild, wild West, where you can say anything? That's not the way it's worked out," Benson said. "It's the same as sending a letter."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 29, 2007 09:22 AM
Posted to Ind Fed D.Ct. Decisions