Maryland's Legal ?Catch-22?

I?ve been waiting for someone with a legal background and access to first-hand accounts of today?s hearing to explain how it was that Aaron Walker got arrested today at the hearing regarding that ?peace order? that Brett Kimberlin bogusly* filed against him.

From what I know of the hearing, if Kimberlin produced evidence of these countless blogs (and I doubt he did), it was quite clear that none of the alleged countless blogs were written Aaron. In essence, Aaron was blamed for the reaction of people to his posts.

Again, as best as I can tell based on the information I have, Aaron was arrested for blogging.

As Glenn Reynolds says:

If I read this correctly, Aaron Walker is in trouble because Kimberlin claims that his blogging has somehow led to other people making death threats. That doesn?t seem to pass the First Amendment smell test. Only if Walker were inciting those threats in a way that passed Brandenburg scrutiny would that work, and I don?t believe that?s the case at all. At any rate, under this approach George Zimmerman ought to be able to jail any number of journalists. . . .

I am told that Aaron raised the Brandenburg case (that?s U.S. Supreme Court precedent on incitement, folks) and the judge said he didn?t care about Brandenburg.

That?s what I?m told.

So Brett Kimberlin, knowing that Aaron was coming to court to defend against a civil ?peace order,? lay in ambush with a criminal charge, so that Aaron would be arrested.

One wonders if this is his new strategy: he sues you for your blogging, and simultaneously obtains a peace order saying you harassed him. If you blog about him again, he gets a judge to rubber stamp a criminal complaint for violating the peace order.

Now, if you don?t show up for the lawsuit, he gets a default judgment. If you do, you get arrested for blogging.

Catch 22. And a nice scam if you can get judges gullible enough to go along with it.

Adding to Walker?s difficulties is that Vaughey looks to be in his late 60s at least. He mentioned a few times about being retired. (Apparently it?s common for retired judges to sometimes come back to the bench to help active judges with the caseload.) Many of Vaughey?s statements suggest that he doesn?t spend much time on the Internet. Thus, he?s probably not intimately familiar with things like Google (GOOG) and Twitter and how they work.

Well, we know that Aaron was screwed no matter what he did today, but Hogberg talks about the quicksands that lie in wait for people who represent themselves, particularly against cagey opponents like Kimberlin:

It seemed like Walker did himself in when the judge asked, ?Where do you see this case going??

Walker, who has tried to get the Maryland State Attorney to file charges against Kimberlin for filing what Walker claims are false criminal charges against him (see here), replied, ?I hope to raise enough consciousness to get the State?s Attorney to file charges.?

?How are you going to do that?? Vaughey asked.

Walker replied, ?I?ve been raising awareness. There?s now 400,000 posts on Google discussing him (Kimberlin), and I?m guessing 300,000 of them are not very pleasant. These are people calling for charges to be filed.?

If you are a judge who knows very little about the Internet, Walker has just made it sound as though he?s able to generate all of this Google traffic against Kimberlin. And Vaughey seemed to believe that is what caused Kimberlin to get death threats.

Vaughey then made a remark about what if you disliked a girl and wanted to talk about her chastity. He seemed to think Kimberlin would feel just as violated as that hypothetical girl would feel.

It appears that the judge simply didn?t have a handle on the fact that Kimberlin is a public figure?nor that he is a serial abuser of the legal system.

In fact, the guy is such a public figure that he?s raked in over a million and a half over the past decade running tax-exempt faux-charities. And the only reason that none of that money ended up in his name is that he is still, to this day, dodging a civil judgement against him due to one of his bombing victims committing suicide. The money doesn?t pass through his hands because he is still, as far as I can tell, defrauding that victim?s widow.

The judge then said that Walker was the type who didn?t want to get into it ?mano-y-mano? with Kimberlin but ?you want to get together with all of your friends, who have nothing else to do with their time, in this judge?s opinion ? and you are creating a conflagration, and you don?t care where it goes. And so you get some freak out in Oklahoma with nothing better to do with his time, so he does the nastiest things he can to this poor gentlemen (Kimberlin). What right does he have to do that??

?He has no right to do that, your honor,? Walker replied.

?But you incited him,? Vaughey said.

Oh, brother. Telling the truth about a public figure is now ?inciting.?

At the end, the judge said, ?All I?ve learned here is one guy hides behind the sheets while the other guy suffers. I don?t care what (Kimberlin?s) background is. A prostitute can also be raped. He?s an individual, he?s entitled to his own privacy and can?t be threatened. What I didn?t like is these death threats that are coming and his children are reading it. That is nasty and wrong.?

As if Aaron had anything to do with those death threats.

The judge signed off on the peace order, which means that Walker can?t say one word about Kimberlin for six months.

?I find that this is worse than harassment. It?s a nasty, dirty thing to do to somebody ? you?ve got people all over writing these things. He?s got 54 pages that he says come directly from you, and he?s got volumes of people who are doing it.?

The judge is, again, very unclear on how internet publishing works. He appears to be thinking in terms of what is good and salubrious in terms of what happens between two private citizens, rather than two publishers of information on the internet. (And, at least Aaron has signed his posts with either his real name or his internet handle, rather than hiding behind a name like ?Breitbart Unmasked.?)

The judge was also unable?apparently?to see how other people are being victimized by Brett Kimberlin?s actions . . . not in the late 1970s, but right now.

Remember the classic definition of chutzpah? It?s when a man kills his parents, and then asks the court for leniency, because he?s an orphan.

This judge, it appears, would have bought that argument.

Both links via Instapundit.

* I made up that word. Do you like it?

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