"Hell, if ah kin beat thet rap, anywun can!"
Posted on 10/08/2012 9:37:35 AM PDT by sinsofsolarempirefan
A Lancashire man who posted offensive comments on Facebook about missing five-year-old April Jones has been jailed for 12 weeks.
Matthew Woods, 20, made a number of derogatory posts about April and missing Madeline McCann.
He appeared at Chorley Magistrates' Court where he admitted sending a grossly offensive public electronic communication.
Woods, of Eaves Lane, Chorley, was handed the maximum sentence.
Chairman of the bench, magistrate Bill Hudson, said his comments were so serious and "abhorrent" that he deserved the longest sentence they could pass, less a third to give credit for his early guilty plea.
Mark Bridger, 46, appeared at Caernarfon Crown Court earlier charged with April's murder.
He is also charged with child abduction and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
I guess they would burn him at the stake if he had insulted muzzie’s favorite morehammed?
Says in the article he was arrested originally for his own safety, as an angry mob was starting to gather outside his house.
Bring back dueling and perhaps people would be more civil. Don’t you just “love” the post modern world?
"Hell, if ah kin beat thet rap, anywun can!"
If it was my child and he posted offensive stuff like that he’d better pray for a jail sentence.
Where’s the link?
Tasteless speech is still free speech.
the speech most protected is that which is unpopular.
So, if you were at say, your Mom’s funeral, and some d-bag decided it would be funny to stand around making crude insinuations about her chastity and virtue, that should be OK, because its ‘freedom of speech’? This guy went out of his way to find a facebook tribute page and troll it in order to deliberately cause upset.
Global Rule will be a bullet in the back of the head to anyone who at by word offend the pervs and muslims.
Then Muslims kill the pervs.
Mission acomplished.
I agree.
I am uneasy about these twitter/facebook cases, perhaps a visit from the police and a warning might suffice. On the other hand, there so many of these wankers doing this now that I lose no sleep if they end up in the pokey.
You do understand how incredibly slippery, steep, and short the slope is when you start jailing people for "offensive" posts on the internet, don't you?
Shouldn’t be illegal but he should need to go into hiding. That’s what’s missing in society, we want the government to substitute for legitimate outrage.
“Tasteless speech is still free speech.”
I don’t see this as a free speech issue. Westborough hides behind that for their profane actions.
Free speech means the govt cannot constrain your speech. He made the statements in public about a little girl.
Second, this occurred in England where they don’t have free speech.
I generally subscribe to JS Mill’s approach to freedom of speech. There is a time and a place. It is the difference between printing leaflets saying corn dealers murder the poor, and actually standing in front of a corn dealer’s home in front of a mob and repeating the same thing.
This guy went to a tribute page for the little girl and deliberately whipped them up. If he wanted to make these jokes on his own website, or blog or youtube or whatever, then fair enough, he has a right to make a complete ass of himself, but its a different matter all together to go and impose yourself right on the people who will be most upset for no better reason than your own sick gratification.
If someone really is vile about my mother at her funeral, and it can be deemed disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, I’d get them arrested.
Let’s say they come up to me nice and calm and say it to my face. Someone should throw them out, knock them out, and maybe you get arrested for it. But we want to live in a violence free world and the government meets out all the violence. I’d prefer good old fashioned outrage.
Uhhhh....step back and recall the “congress shall make no law” part of A1.
I think you’ll find that the founding father’s still accepted the need for certain restrictions on freedom of speech (i.e. libel and slander laws) so that people cannot simply say what they want with malicious intent.
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