Posted on 10/15/2009 7:22:06 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
In a split decision, a U.S. appeals court upheld the convictions of animal-rights activists charged under a terrorism statute with using their Web site to incite threats and vandalism against a company that tests products on animals.
The 2-1 decision was the first federal appellate court ruling on a constitutional challenge to the law.
Defense lawyers call the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty case only the latest example of the government infringing on activists' free speech. One compared it to the pursuit of communists and civil-rights activists a half-century ago.
"The government is always doing the same thing, prosecuting the loud leaders for conspiracy to commit particular crimes that they are not committing, and are not planning to commit," defense lawyer Peter Goldberger said Thursday.
Six members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty were convicted at a 2006 trial in New Jersey of conspiracy to violate the 1992 Animal Enterprise Protection Act. The law, since revised, aimed to protect animal research laboratories from illegal, sometimes violent protests.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
3rd Circuit
Threats and violence? Why not promote boycotting? I won’t buy products that have been force-fed to animals. I don’t mind knowing who they are, so I will take my money elsewhere, but in no way would I encourage threats against them. Get them in the wallet, that hurts worse anyway.
The Left would have no troube getting a law passed forbiding the abuse of livestock.
This is not good, though, if the threats were not clearly threats and incitment to kill specific people.
If it is an in general threat, the Left can use this to claim any “hate speech” is terrorism - the incitement to kill. Hate speech is whatever they say it is.
IIRC, about a year or so after 9-11, the FBI said that after Islamic
terrorist, their second greatest concern was with environmentalist
“activism” groups.
If the US Justice Department keeps pressure on the domestic terrorists
during the Obamanation Adminstration...
I’ll be shocked (and somewhat pleased).
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