It may be that the specific local statute is written in such a way as to include this kind of personal harrassment, but if not, then it does appear to be a strange, and probably incorrect charge, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t still criminal. I think the Amicus claim that the conviction was for merely being harshly critical of the prof is disingenuous. There’s a difference bewteen being publicly critical and sending harrassing emails.
And yes, I suispect that the OP was exepecting liberals to rush to defend the conviction.
If Bricker wants us to play this game, the least he can do is post the written legal definition for disturbing the peace, or whatever you law-talking-guys call it, for whatever jurisdiction the harasser was convicted in.
Or is part of the game making us look it up ourselves?
One thing that always goes a long with free speech, is that you are free to say it, but we are also free to not listen.
In this case, the receiver wasn’t being allowed to ignore it. It’s quite similar to a protester standing on your side walk shouting at you so loud you can hear it in the house, or repeatedly calling you. You’d like to ignore it, but you can’t because it’s targeted at you. Personally, I think the right to be left alone trumps the right to free speech.
That said, the professor is a vindictive asshole for not simply black listing him.
But Bricker alleges that the student kept on sending the harrassing emails with new email addresses. So blacklisting the student’s email address wasn’t enough.
Here’s a bit of what was said in one of the emails from Drahota:(PDF: page 4)
I found the “disturbing the peace” statute listed, but no link to what the statute actually says.
Nebraska Statute info: (Ironically from an Operation Rescue website which probably knows it well)
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28-1322 (the “Disturbing the Peace Statute”) provides:
(1) Any person who shall intentionally disturb the peace and quiet of any person, family or neighborhood commits the offense of
disturbing the peace.
I don’t see how it could be considered “disturbing the peace” personally. I don’t see how it is even stalking, unless the student was following the professor, skulking around his house, or something. From the few lines the OP mentioned, I see no threats made, just some attempts to insult. In short, I see a young jerk. Being a jerk isn’t illegal.
So, I can’t get my head around him being arrested, if no threats were made, and if there was no actual physical stalking.
From here.
The statute seems so broad to me that I don’t see how it could be constitutional. You can’t make abusive comments in Nebraska without being guilty of a crime?
Stalking doesn’t hav to be physical. Any unwanted attempt to continue to make contact after being asked to stop can be considered stalking. That includes email. The prof had asked this dude (who seems a little unstable, frankly) to leave him alone. The emails are decidely harrassing, and borderline threatening (“I would kick your ass if you said that in front of me”).
Kind of amusingly ironic that this kid is now whining about his own free speech rights after saying he would physically assault somebody for saying something he didn’t like.
OK, I understand it from that viewpoint (the “I’d kick your ass” part and the fact that the emails kept coming). As to the underlined part, maybe it’s just Animal Farm - everyone is equal, but some ore more equal?
One way or the other, the “kid” is a jerk.
It doesn’t read that broadly to me, and this is pretty standard for Disturbing the Peace statutes. I believe it has to do with whether a person has a reasonable expectation of peace (and/or quiet) in a given situation.
Since this particular statute covers individual “persons,” I think the conviction may be defensible.
Doesn’t there have to be some sort of third part involved for it to be slander? If you and I are in a room alone together, and I call you a traitor, how is that slander? I can’t have damaged your reputation, because you’re the only one who knows that I said you were a traitor.
“Traitor,” itself, as just a word, strikes me as too ambiguous to be slander, as well, because what constitutes treason can be pretty subjective. A lot of people have highly individual ideas of what constitutes treasonous activity. If someone calls me a traitor for voting for Barrack Obama, he hasn’t actually lied about me, he’s just placing a very negative value on an action I admittedly undertook.
(Obviously, calling me a traitor for selling military secrets to the Chinese when I haven’t done so would be a slanderous usage of the word “traitor.” But it looks like this student has defined “being a liberal” as “treason.” Which is plenty stupid, but not slanderous.
IANAL, but there was an implied threat of bodily harm, which puts things in a different category, but still. Perhaps the Prof felt his life, limb, or family was in danger. Doesn’t justify the jail time, IMO, but certainly some legal remedy.
I get emails all the time telling me that I can’t satisfy my wife because my penis isn’t big enough. I consider them to be indecent and abusive. I suppose that in Nebraska, they’d be criminal too.
The lack of threats was a big part of the oral argument in front of the Nebraska Supreme Court. The only threat ws the “I’d kick your ass if you said that in front of me,” which was sent under the student’s real name – but was NOT, significantly, one of the e-mails that prompted the charges against the student. Those charges were predicated on the two e-mails sent by under the fake “averylovesalqueda@ yahoo.com.” (Avery being the name of the prof turned state senator)
At oral argument, the state argued that even though the charges listed only those two e-mails (the other ones, under the real name, were four months old at tht point), the other e-mails, especially the “kick ass” threat, was significant.
Well, this is a collection of documents about the case… but it was assemled by defendant’s pro bono lawyer. I’m not sure how much bias that imputes to them. So far as I can tell, they are accurate reproductions of the documents.
