So when is APster coming out, which lets you trade lists of deserving people?
Tuesday September 12 5:11 AM ET Abortion Web Site Verdict Appealed
By WILLIAM McCALL, Associated Press Writer
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Anti-abortion activists are asking a federal appeals court to overturn a $109 million verdict by a jury that decided a Web site and posters listing the names of abortion doctors and clinics were threats that went beyond free speech.
The case is widely seen as a test of a Supreme Court ruling that
defined a threat as
explicit language likely to cause imminent lawless action - and a
measure of how
far anti-abortion activists can go in harrying doctors and clinics.
Oral arguments in the appeal are scheduled Tuesday before a panel of
the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals.
At issue is a Web site called The Nuremberg Files that listed
hundreds of abortion
doctors accused of committing crimes against humanity and invited
readers to
send in doctors addresses, license plate numbers and even the names
of their
children.
Last year, the dozen anti-abortion activists argued the posters and
Web site were
free speech protected under the First Amendment. Critics called it a
hit list.
The jury was told by U.S. District Judge Robert Jones to consider the
history of
violence in the anti-abortion movement, including three doctors
killed after their
names appeared on the lists.
One was Dr. Barnett Slepian, who was gunned down by a sniper in
October 1998 at
his home near Buffalo, N.Y. Slepians name was crossed out on The
Nuremberg
Files Web site later that day.
In 1995, Planned Parenthood and four doctors sued the anti-abortion
activists under
federal racketeering statutes and the 1994 Freedom of Access to
Clinic Entrances
Act, which makes it illegal to incite violence against abortion
doctors and their
patients.
Jones told the jury the Wanted-style posters and Web site were not
free speech if
a reasonable person could perceive them as threats.
But a number of legal experts have criticized the February 1999 jury
verdict and
those instructions, saying a threat must be explicit.
If youre looking for a case likely to go to the Supreme Court, this
is one, said Lee
Tornquist, a law professor who specializes in the First Amendment at
Willamette
University in Salem, Ore.
Others consider the jury decision sound.
Margie Kelly, spokeswoman for the Center for Reproductive Law and
Policy in
New York, said Jones correctly told the jury to weigh any threat in
context.
This is a case that is built on history, Kelly said. You have had
years of arson,
shootings, death threats. How can that context be considered anything
but a threat?
The Georgia computer programmer who ran the Nuremberg Files was not a defendant in the lawsuit. After the verdict, his Internet provider
pulled the plug on
the site.
Among the anti-abortion activists appealing the ruling is Michael
Bray of Bowie,
Md., author of a book that justifies killing doctors to stop
abortions. Bray served
time in federal prison from 1985 to 1989 for his role in arson
attacks and bombings
of seven clinics.