Bolding mine.
Are you absolutely sure about this? If you’re giving someone the information that they need in order to commit a criminal act against someone, I’m fairly sure you could be considered part of a conspiracy.
No, conspiracy liability requires an agreement to accomplish in the crime and (depending on the conspiracy statute) an act in futherance. Merely knowing someone else has it in for the victim and giving the would-be perpetrator information doesn’t really rise to the level of agreeing to achieve a criminal objective. The mens rea needed for conspiracy liability is absent. See, e.g., People v. Lauria, outlined here.
How about accessory before the fact, or (in New York law) criminal facilitation? This does not require an intent to conspire, but only an intent to enable or facilitate a criminal act by another?
That is one of the elements of accomplice/accessory liability, but just giving out information, even to someone you know who is out to get the victim, does not constitute an intent to accomplish the crime. The prosecutor might try this theory, but I doubt one could get it to stick. This is analogous to the case here, where the indictment was dismissed.
But step back and think about how widely such a rule would spread criminal liability. If knowing the ill wishes of others could subject you to criminal liability for cooperating with them, then certainly there would be a great deal of deterrence of dealing with anyone whom you might even suspect of unsavory intentions. Moreover, it seems to have the effect of replacing the singling out criminal actors for public resentment with a more generalized, communtarian notion of blameworthiness. The point of criminal law is not to cashier people who fall short of the most exacting standards of social propriety; it is to specially punish those who run grossly afoul of minimum standards of conduct. The actions of Bill White are creepy and unpleasant; but that’s life in the big city. And we definitely don’t want to suggest the culpability of someone who uses this information to attack the jury foreperson does not but rest squarely on the one who did the attacking.
William White is quite a guy. He was profiled by the Intelligence Report last year.
By his own admission, he was convicted several times for violent offences as a youth:
More recently, he was convicted of assaulting a woman that he said was his former lover, an allegation she denied:
He’s also a full-bore neo-Nazi, who started up his own new-Nazi group when he got kicked out of another one. He’s got a history of dressing up in full Nazi regalia and organizing Nazis and other white supremacists to march in black neighbourhoods. He was the leader of the group that marched in Toledo a few years ago, triggering a major race riot, which I remember got some discussion on these boards.
He also has a long track record of publishing personal information about people he dislikes, with language that suggests he wants others to hurt them. For example, in relation to the Jena 6 episode, the article quotes his website as having the following post:
Does that sort of inflammatory post merit First Amendment protection? Is it a sufficiently particularized threat? I don’t know. But I can certainly see why the police would investigate, to see if it amounts to a threat that is not protected by the First Amendment. It would then be a question of fact for the police to investigate and a jury to decide.
Similarly, I can see why the police would investigate that sort of public statement made against federal judges, especially since the charge on which Matt Hale was convicted was conspiring to have a follower murder a federal judge in Chicago. That kind of context is an important factor in assessing whether a statement if protected by the First Amendment, or is a “nudge-nudge, wink-wink” inducement to another person to commit acts of violence.
As for the statement that his target audience is prone to violence, that doesn’t strike me as an unusual concern for law enforcement to have, and to take into consideration in this sort of situation. The Klan and neo-Nazis do have a history of violence. If someone consistently uses inflammatory language, directed to the Klan/neo-Nazi set, pointing out targets that fit their known prejudices, that is part of the overall context to assess whether the speech amounts to a threat, unprotected by the First Amendment.
Finally, Mr. White is not out of the woods yet. He faces additional charges in Virginia, similar to those in Chicago, but with allegations of more direct threats against specific individuals. More details can be found here: Dismissed Charges in Chicago might not affect Roanoke case:
I think convictions that are sealed do not affect one’s First Amendment rights as an adult.
It sounds like they deserve each other, but again, I don’t think this should affect his First Amendment right to maintain a website.
No offense, but this is irrelevant. Nazis have rights, the same as everyone else. This is the curse, and blessing, of the Constitution.
Perhaps. It might depend more on what the Chicago DA thinks, and not on what a law professor in VA and the head of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in California thinks.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, it happens that the law professor in Virginia is right. The Northern District of Illinois’s dismissal of the indictment will have no effect on the separately brought charges arising out of a separate series of occurrences in Virginia.
As to what the (non-existent) Chicago DA (perhaps you mean the Cook County State’s Attorney?) has to say about it, I’m pretty sure it’s nil, considering that this was a federal prosecution. But that said, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois won’t have any say in the Virginia action either.
Deuces,
Gibbler
I missed that part - thanks.
The point was that the opinions expressed in the article were not from anyone actually involved, and had no relevance to whether or not he should be stopped from posting jurors’ names on his website. Did you have any thoughts on that you would like to share with the class? 
Regards,
Shodan