There is a disturbing case out of Illinois where a teenage boy has been arrested for posting his ranking of 50 female students at Oak Park-River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois “by their sexual characteristics and alleged sexual behaviors” and posting it on Facebook. It is another example of the criminalization of our society and raises serious first amendment questions.
Prosecutors charge that the listing ranked the girls “by explicit, derogatory nicknames and assessed their physical appearance, sexual desirability, sexual activity and other characteristics.” He used a point scale to rank the girls. He printed out the listed and passed them out in addition to the posting on Facebook. Clearly, any students who hands out such obnoxious lists is properly subject to discipline in the school. He was ultimately expelled from the school. However, the prosecutors took the act of boorish, unacceptable behavior and made it a crime.
Oak Park Police Detective Commander. LaDon Reynolds, found that such conduct warranted a charge of “disorderly conduct.” One father, Dale Jones, father of one of the girls, is quoted as saying that even this charge is insufficient and that they want more criminal charges to be brought against the boy.
Charging obnoxious postings as a crime threatens free speech and would allow prosecutors and police to arbitrarily select out particular messages or authors for prosecution.
Source: Pioneer
Jonathan Turley
Mike
That sounds like Tim Masters in Colorado. When he was 15 he made weird drawings. In fact, psychologists are now recommending that teens express their dark thoughts through weird drawings. Unfortunately for Tim, he was convicted of murder because he made weird drawings. The police withheld the evidence that there was someone else’s DNA on the victim’s underwear. I guess he is doing OK now because he got about $10 Million after he was released but he did spend like half his life in jail. And the officers got off free with no adverse affects at all. And the taxpayer is footing the bill.
As an eighth grader at Blessed Sacrament School, I maintained a list of my favorite ten girls in order of preference. I revised the list each week, carefully recording both the new and previous week’s ranking. Girls would move up and down on the list, sometimes disappearing entirely and being replaced by new names. It looked much like a Top 40 list, but with fewer titles, and remained a complete secret until now.
My qualifications were somewhat vague and wholly subjective, of course. It was a much less sophisticated time and I had absolutely no idea what, if any, sexual activity any of the girls I knew might have experienced. Our encounters were limited to glances, notes, third hand reports, awkward games of Spin the Bottle and Post Office at parties, and the pounding of my heart while slow dancing to Tommy Edwards’ “All in the Game” and absorbing the aromatic mixture of her Jungle Gardenia and my perspiration as our cheeks pressed together.
All in all, it was pretty wonderful, but I had no idea I was one computer away from prosecution.
DownEast Liberator,
Thank you.
“Up here in the Pine Tree State the legislative nabobs have for several years tried to enact “retroactive” laws to criminalize past incidents and make manditory sentencing the norm for 1st time convictions.”
The worst of it is that these type of laws appeal to the majority of Americans who have been sold the “myth” that acting “tough” on something indicates common sense, when all it really discloses is a closed mind.
Mike S.
Thanks, great post. I wholly agree w/ you about erosion of our basic rights. Our country has devolved into a “someone has to PAY for this” mentality with no room for reason, rationality or moderation. The old “get tough on crime” credo has become “get tough on anyone who pi$$e$ you off”. Up here in the Pine Tree State the legislative nabobs have for several years tried to enact “retroactive” laws to criminalize past incidents and make manditory sentencing the norm for 1st time convictions. Mercy and compassion are off the table, just string ’em up and throw away the key…
Agree that Gyges is probably right…
OT:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-12/facebook-busted-in-clumsy-smear-attempt-on-google/#
The social network secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about the search giant, The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons reveals—a caper that is blowing up in their face, and escalating their war.
For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.
The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”
But who was the mysterious unnamed client? While fingers pointed at Apple and Microsoft, The Daily Beast discovered that it’s a company nobody suspected—Facebook.
(end excerpt)
We’ve discussed on many threads the criminalization of the people and the ever expanding erosion of our free speech rights. Free speech of course covers obnoxious behavior. Beneath these obvious issues lies the psychology rampant today that all behavior, deemed harmful, requires criminal punishment. This in itself needs to be explored. Some behaviors that are socially deviant, nevertheless, in my opinion are not criminal per se and do not require the intervention of the criminal justice system.
Much of this has arisen due to the ersatz War On Drugs and on the work of Groups like MADD. The WOD is too easy a target, but the MADD crusade has been one that it is difficult to take on because it like apple pie just seems so right. Indeed chemically impaired drivers who cause others harm should face prosecution. How much, needs to be determined by the recidivism of the actor in continuing to DUI and the driving actions surrounding the incident. Because of this heightened awareness though there has been a “spill over” effect to all driving situations, even when the offense does not involve substance abuses.
Hypothetically, what if a person driving 45mph, in a thirty mph zone crashes into another car hurting or even killing the driver.
This is a terrible thing, they should be punished in some way, but should they be sent to prison? Does this accomplish anything beneficial to society? It is a difficult question, especially if you know the victim. Yet at the bottom of this there lies the motive of society revenging itself upon the miscreant.
Another instance, that has occurred repeatedly is a case where let’s say a thirteen year old, playing with a parent’s gun with another friend, accidentally shoots the other child. We have seen these 13 year olds, charged as adults and receive sentences for aggravated Manslaughter and then locked up for a number of years. Was this truly criminal behavior that deserves severe punishment?
These are difficult questions and I don’t presume to know the answers. I am convinced though that we have gone too far in the direction of a vengeance taking, punishment society. This has been fueled not only by organizations like Madd, but by a media bound to sensationalize anything in the interest of amusing and frightening their audience. It has also led to so-called “Law and Order” political candidates basing their entire careers on helping to mete out punishment to “evil-doers.” Popular sentiment surrounding a much publicized tragic event has more often than not led to bad legislation and judicial precedent.
In this instance I think Gyges raises an interesting possibility that may well have credence.
Raff,
Hell hath no furry like an embarrassed local politician.
Gyges,
I had not thought of that angle. The whole criminal thing makes more sense when you consider that possibility.
What the students did is not recognized as a crime in international law and would be not allowed under the U.N. Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cpr.html
However, the U.S. never fully adopted it.
I have a sneaking suspicion that you are 100% correct, Gyges.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the daughter of someone high on the political ladder of the town was on that list.
Again (sorry), the overreach of prosecutors, politcos, officaldom in general, enacting laws obviously unconsitiutional or using law contrary to constitutional safeguards, IF they obviously or should know better usually for self-serving reasons, should carry sanctions, and not just cash awards that are later reduced by cooperative courts.
Charging obnoxious postings as a crime threatens free speech and would allow prosecutors and police to arbitrarily select out particular messages or authors for prosecution.
Don’t we already do that…..
Yeah,
It is a pretty disgusting “project” that this kid was working on, but as Prof. Turley pointed out, being an SOB is not illegal. If this is a crime, then any speech that we don’t like is a crime. Sad situation for the girls and for the boy who went from being a creep to a criminal!
I think the whole town of Oak Park, Illinois except possibly the girls on the list should be sent to bed without any suppers.
You’re all behaving like children and, sadly, some of the children have authority to bring charges.
In the recent popular movie about the history of Facebook it is portrayed that the exact same exercise was done at Harvard so that is probably where he got the idea.
When I was at MIT, around 73 or 74, two coeds wrote a ranking of 15 or 20 male MIT students with description of their sexual techniques and published it in an unofficial student newspaper “Tuesday”. Nothing happened to the girls but as my husband remembers the student publisher was expelled from MIT. This was during alumni week and there were a lot of alumni complaints. The publisher had been accepted to law school before being expelled. As my husband remembers it, Jerry Lettvin, a popular MIT professor who lived in the dormitory that both my husband and the publisher did, called the law school and convinced them not to withdraw the publisher’s acceptance. I just looked the publisher up and his on-line resume claims that he is a graduate of MIT so he must have got the expulsion withdrawn eventually.
“According to Powers, authorities have spent the last four months working with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office to build a case against the teen.” -Huffington Post article
… and a productive use of time and resources, as well…
puzzling,
Yep, that supports one of the arguments Professor Turley made, i.e., selective prosecution.
What about the Duke Fuck List, made by a female undergrad?