Creative expression trumps criminal charge

mdoneil writes “A California student had his conviction for threatening two students overtunred by the California Supreme court when it found that his poems which were shared with other students were not criminal.
The Court which reprinted the poems in its ruling [pdf file here]noted that the poems were creative expression protected by the First Amendment.
Oddly though the article found it necessary to mention that when the police when to the young man’s home and asked if there were any guns the young man alerted them to a rifle and handgun. No further mention is made to any illegality involving the firearms.”

July 23, 2004 by Uncategorized 1

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1 Response

  1. Gales says:
    July 24, 2004 at 5:53 pm

    Oddly, there are other agendas.
    I know it appears odd about the reference to firearms, but I believe it’s an example of a newspaper (owners, editorial board) making a pitch for another issue. In this case, the young man’s household had firearms, he had caused fear, therefore increase guncontrol. It happens frequently in my local newspaper. One pet project is building a new baseball stadium with public money. You’d be astonished at the number of articles that “link” this issue to anything and everything, including terrorism. An example is an article about improved security at our airport which sequed in the closing paragraphs into a description of how those improvements will be standard at the new (unbuilt) stadium.

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