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We're looking over our options.

I wonder if you can get $$ support for a suit from Landmark Legal or some of the other conservative legal groups?

Nolle prosequi means "I choose not to prosecute." It does NOT necessarily mean there was something wrong about the case (although in your case there WAS an obvious violation of your First Amendment rights to free speech and the equally strong or stronger provisions of the Connecticut constitution, both something very wrong with your case). Be aware that a nolled case is not dismissed and can be revived during the 13 months immediately following the nolle. At least until 2000 when I left Connecticut for America and retired. I am now and always will be a recovering attorney.

I practiced law and represented 1100 pro-lifers in Connecticut arrested in abortion mill sit-ins and some others wrongfully arrested for free speech exercises. Connecticut generally avoids arrests such as yours. I suspect that your case might give rise to discipline of the offending officer(s). Talk to a lawyer and get a written commitment from the department that free speech will be honored. Anything short of surrender means take it straight to federal district court. The Connecticut Superior (state) Court will delay you forever. Get a liberal FedJudge (but I repeat myself) to suffer the indignity of having to enjoin the offending police department. Thereafter, hearings triggered by further harassment will be contempt hearings leading to immediate punishment of the offending police.

There is a mountain of pre-existing law to back you up. Don't be dissuaded by the argument that your success might encourage naked folks being painted onto the side of other trucks. Anything that the ACLU and its ilk can do against American morals has been done or will be done regardless of your success.

Attorney Vincent McCarthy of New Milford, Connecticut, is an experienced pro-life attorney of substantial ability and is the Connecticut attorney for Jay Sekulow's American Center for law and justice. Call him.

SergeantsLady: I can sympathize with your resistance to having your children exposed to the giant-sized photos of sliced, diced and hamburgerized babies. You have no legal standing, however. The First Amendment Freedom of Speech has long-since been deemed to include pictorial displays. It is not just to protect public recitations of Mary Had a Little Lamb or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. What coarsens our nation is not the public display of murdered baby photos as the mass murder of the babies. 45-50 million slaughtered by surgeries alone (never mind hundreds of millions by abortifacient pills). Here in Illinois, most attempts to limit free speech in this regard start with tose parents who are NOT pro life but feel that boodgums has not reached a sufficient age to be effectively propagandized to believe the "blob of tissue" lies just in case family reputation or convenience dictates dragging Susie to the nearest mill to have her "problem" taken care of. Kids have an honesty problem with the convenient lies of their elders. I am really not trying to be insensitive but protecting your kids on this count means ending abortion. Until it ends, our kids will be psychologically and morally assaulted by its continuance. We can take solace in the fact and so can they, that our kids were the survivors of their generations (1/3 of whose members are slaughtered deprived even of names at the abortion mill death camps if we only count surgical abortions).

Also, nolles are in the absolute discretion of the prosecutor. No judicial permission necessary. None allowed. If you ASK for an immediate dismissal, the judge may say no to dismissal at that time. After thirteen months since the entry of the nolle, the dismissal is automatic and a matter of statutory law.