
Man jailed for criticizing court system has been acquitted by jury - wallace_f
https://reason.com/2019/09/20/a-michigan-man-has-been-acquitted-by-a-jury-for-criticizing-a-county-judge-on-facebook/
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cbanek
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](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.

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d-sc
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.

~~~
colejohnson66
What part, in your opinion, isn’t covered by the first amendment?

~~~
d-sc
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_threat)

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

