ACLU Wins Dismissal in Case of 15-Year-Old
Prosecuted for Underground Newspaper
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 27, 1998The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado (ACLU) announced today that felony charges of criminal libel have been dismissed against its client, a 15-year-old high school student who was prosecuted for his alleged role in writing an anonymous underground newspaper that contained satire directed against school administrators in Fort Collins.
The rarely-used criminal libel statute makes it a felony to publish statements "tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead, or to impeach the honesty, integrity, virtue, or reputation or expose the natural defects of one who is alive."
State District Court Judge James H. Hiatt granted the ACLU’s motion to dismiss in an order signed on July 23.
"This ruling is a victory for the First Amendment," said Marcy Glenn of Holland & Hart, who filed briefs in the case as an ACLU volunteer cooperating attorney. "The judge explained that satire, even offensive satire, is expression that is fully protected by the Constitution."
"Writing an underground newspaper should not be grounds for sticking a fifteen-year-old with a felony record," said Todd Taylor, a Greeley criminal defense attorney who participated on the ACLU defense team. "This prosecution was overkill from the beginning."
Judge Hiatt threw out the case because the school administrators are public officials and because the writings were obviously satire. The judge characterized the writing as "scatological, bizarre, puerile, and crude, " but explained that "there is absolute First Amendment protection for statements that cannot reasonably be interpreted as making factual assertions."
As examples of the content, the judge cited insinuations that a school administrator is a lesbian who had an affair with Princess Diana; that 95% of all teachers at the high school are involved in sales of illegal drugs; that the principal was caught selling crack to students. Other allegations accused administrators of being members of the KKK and asserted that certain administrators had been seen meeting in the school library dressed in white cloaks and holding Confederate flags.
"The First Amendment forbids the government from treating such satire, parody, or rhetorical hyperbole as a crime," said Mark Silverstein, ACLU Legal Director. "As the court explained, no reasonable reader could believe that the author was seriously making assertions of actual fact that could harm the administrators’ reputations."
By ruling on grounds that applied only to this particular prosecution, Judge Hiatt avoided ruling on the ACLU’s broader attack on the constitutionality of the criminal libel statute itself. "Although we are pleased that our client is no longer threatened with a criminal prosecution," Silverstein said, "we are disappointed that the criminal libel statute remains on the books as a potential threat to the right of free expression."
"There is no legitimate place for a criminal libel statute in a free society," Silverstein continued. "Civil lawsuits provide an adequate remedy for defamation. No one should be threatened with jail for what they write."
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