Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Delaware: Making people pay for political speech
Some of you may remember that in last year's candidate debate for US House and US Senate at the University of Delaware that Ralph Begleiter demanded and got the arrest of several members of the Green Party who were protesting the exclusion of third-party candidates.
Yesterday, at the Court of Common Pleas in Wilmington, a couple Libertarians got to watch first-hand how the justice system in Delaware plays out.
A flurry of activity about 11:30. Lawyers conferring, people signing papers.
It turns out that the State, confronted with the presence of actual witnesses, was not so eager to put the Chief of the UD Police (who, it turns out, was the cop who forgot to identify himself before trying to strangle Mr. Kahn) on the stand, and was suddenly willing to talk about a plea bargain.
The best of a bad deal: Bernie August and Dez Kahn accepting "probation before judgment," which means they had to pay a fine and court costs, but left the building with no criminal conviction.
Each man had to fork over slightly below $300 for having exercised his freedom of speech.
Source
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
They were fools to pay the fine. They should have demanded a jury trial.
It's not freedom of speech when you try to prevent others from speaking.
I agree with A. Levy. Accepting a plea bargain is only worthwhile if you have a reasonable chance of losing, not when you're ready to wipe the floor with the other side.
More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant and dictators.
@4:17... I guess genocide does not fall into the category of "harm"
Annon 4:47, faceles bureaucrats are the ones who actually carry out the edicts of the dictators without a peep.
I don't blame them for just paying the court costs to escape the clutches of the government. They probably were glad for it to.be.over. I wish however that those responsible would have had to explain their actions.
Post a Comment