Posted on 03/01/2009 4:50:47 AM PST by Man50D
A judge in one of the nation's most brutal carjacking and murder cases has openly questioned in court whether news websites such as those covering his trial should be permitted to allow open and anonymous "comments" sections at the bottom of Internet-posted stories.
"I'm saying if there is a profit, there is a responsibility that goes with it," said Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner of Knox County, Tenn., to an attorney for the Knoxville News Sentinel.
"This is not the Internet. This is a site created by you in which you invite comments," the judge stated. "This is something you control."
Richard Hollow, the newspaper's attorney, argued that a court-imposed policy on the "comments" sections would be an unconstitutional infringement of First Amendment free speech rights.
"What the court is asking us to do is set up a board of censorship," Hollow said.
The legal wrangling is part of the trial of five suspects charged in the January 2007 carjacking, rape and murder of Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23, in Knoxville, Tenn.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Most Tennessee county court houses have judges who came from the one or two prevailing law firms in the county seat. As such they remain on bench as judge till they are too senile to find their way back to the court house anymore. Don't look for truth there because they don't want to hear it or will have a more pressing public event to attend elsewhere. Telling truth in a Tennessee Court can find you in contempt faster than you can spit. The High Dollar Shyster Lawyers whom most Judges worship make a moockery of justice and truth as well.
Tennessee Courts and Lawyers are also known for fiasco's they let go on for years like Zoo Man. Judge and Lawyers media grandstanding for years on end and justice never served. I pray never again have to see any court room in my state again for any reason.
I agree. We are now under the rule of men, not law. So much for the Republic!
The owner of a website may set and enforce whatever conditions for its content that he or she chooses. That's different from having the government set those conditions for everyone.
It's like if someone's visiting your house and they start bad-mouthing your wife. They may have a first-amendment right to free speech, but they don't have a first-amendment right to your living room. You can toss them out and they can do their bad-mouthing on the sidewalk... in fashion, free-speech rights and private-property rights are both preserved.
To my mind, the argument that discussion of a court case should be suppressed because it might possibly taint a jury is far too tenuous and theoretical a hook on which to hang the supression of an enumerated constitutional right. If it were a valid argument, it might have been made long before there was an internet to muddy the water. The publicity of court cases has been a factor since the invention of the newspaper.
You seem to not understand the very fundamental difference between government-imposed censorship, and censorship by a private owner regarding how his soap box is used.
The First Amendment speaks to one case, and not the other. Bringing up the latter in a conversation about the former is unhelpful to your argument, at best.
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