'Fake News' Results In Real Jail Time For Ohio Woman
from the never-mind-the-Constitution dept
It appears fake news is a crime in the United States -- at least in Ohio. Jacob Sullum at Reason reports an Ohio woman has just been jailed for repeating an unfounded rumor about a gun being found on school grounds.
Last week Barberton Municipal Judge David Fish sentenced Erin Croghan to three days in jail, a month of house arrest, and a year without social media for "inducing panic" by using Facebook to repeat an unfounded rumor about a pellet gun found at a local school. It could have been worse. Inducing panic is a first-degree misdemeanor in Ohio, meaning it is punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail.
As Sullum points out, this sentencing appears to ignore the First Amendment, which allows for the spreading of stupidity, even if the stupidity could conceivably provoke reactions from those who come across it.
The school claims the repeating of the unfounded rumor -- months after the alleged event had happened -- disrupted school administration. Apparently, the principal of Coventry Middle School "spent the entire day" answering phone calls from parents who had read Croghan's post. Croghan's post -- referencing a rumor she had heard from her daughter the previous November -- hit Facebook shortly after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.
The impact of her post certainly was felt by the school, but did it really meet the "serious public inconvenience or alarm" standard needed to convict Croghan? That seems unlikely. As her defense pointed out, the school didn't alert parents, go into lockdown mode, or do anything else that would signal it believed the unfounded rumor to be true.
Croghan either believed the rumor was true or deliberately inflamed the rumor to… well, that question remains unanswered. Even the judge handing down the sentence seemed at a loss for words.
Barberton Municipal Judge David Fish also put Erin Croghan on probation for one year and ordered that she refrain from using social media during that time.
“I wish I understood why you conflated this story about a pellet gun in a locker that school officials say never happened,” Fish said. “That may remain an eternal mystery.”
Therein lies the other problem with the sentence: prior restraint. Just because the incident Croghan was sentenced for occurred on Facebook doesn't justify the revocation of this privilege for an entire year. This is in addition to a sentence of 180 days in jail (with 147 suspended and 30 days of house arrest) -- all over the spread of info Croghan may have sincerely believed to be true.
The school claims Croghan knew the rumor was false, offering up perhaps the most unbelievable justification for this claim:
Coventry schools officials say what Croghan posted wasn’t true and that she knew it because they told her.
Right. No one has ever lied about anything. Except Croghan. Apparently.
The end result is a ruling that will be used to punish more people for spreading rumors on social media. Ohio needs to start pouring money into their jail system if this is the way these cases are going to be handled, as Croghan's lawyer points out:
"If we're going to charge every person who puts misinformation on Facebook," [Jeff ]Laybourne told the jury, "this place will be inundated."
The sentence is being appealed. This will likely be followed by a lawsuit, especially if the sentence is overturned. The application of the state law in this fashion criminalizes ignorance. And, in this case, it comes with additional Constitutional violations (prior restraint) that make it litigation bait. Handing out jail time in response to "fake news" is the worst way to handle careless -- but protected -- speech. Sooner or later, Ohio taxpayers are going to be paying real dollars to settle cases stemming from "fake news" arrests.
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Filed Under: 1st amendment, erin croghan, fake news, free speech, ohio, rumors, social media
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The application of the state law in this fashion criminalizes ignorance.
And the last thing we need in this country is the functional equivalent of the "war on drugs," where we put a ridiculously large swath of the country in jail for just being who they are.
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Missing a few details in the summary.
She was deliberately trying to stir up shit and cause other parents to panic. That is not protected speech. That's being an asshole.
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Then she'll have to challenge the law itself on constitutional grounds because she does seem to have clearly violated the statute:
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2. Even if she knew they were lying, it still needs to create an immediate reaction, like saying it to someone's face in the middle of the school. Posting on social media won't do that.
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That would make the law impossible to enforce. As long as every person charged said they thought it was true, it would be the perfect defense. You could call in a bomb threat and say you really believed there was a bomb. Can she prove they were lying? Did she have a reasonable cause for believing it to be true? The article says she heard a rumor second hand. That doesn't rise to the level of proof for justifiably causing a panic.
Did you read the statute? It doesn't say anything about immediate reaction or conveying the panic-inducing claim in person.
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Exactly. It is a bad law for this case. But your bomb threat is a completely different matter since that is intended to immediately cause panic. This event happened months after the fact. A better example would be
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The statute says nothing about immediate. You're adding wording that isn't there.
There is no such requirement in the statute. Did you write this law and therefore can speak to its intent? If it was intended to include language about the immediacy of the fake threat, why wasn't that included? But that's a pointless debate. The panic was caused by the reporting by the defendant months later. It doesn't matter that the thing being reported supposedly happened in the past. People panicked shortly after the posts for which the defendant was charged.
It's fine to say you think the statute is a violation of the 1st Amendment and invalid, but stop making up false claims about what the statute says when the link to it is right there in the article.
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That's the government's problem, not the citizen's.
We don't lose our rights just because the government wrote a law that's hard to enforce. Or put another way, it's not the job of the citizen to ease the burden on the government.
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> causing a panic.
There's no evidence that anyone panicked in this case. Just a cheesed-off principal who had to answer a bunch of phone calls.
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Apparently, the principal of Coventry Middle School "spent the entire day" answering phone calls from parents who had read Croghan's post.
...
That seems unlikely. As her defense pointed out, the school didn't alert parents, go into lockdown mode, or do anything else that would signal it believed the unfounded rumor to be true.
Truly, the amount of panic that resulted from her post was positively staggering. I mean an entire day's worth of phone calls(not parents concerned enough to pick their kids up mind, just call)? That's just a few steps shy of a mob really.
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The woman was shouting “Fire!” in a theatre.
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https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enou gh/
and [shorter]
https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-censorship-tropes-in-the-medias -coverage-of-free-speech-controversies/
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Missing a few details in the summary.
Charles T. Schenck was convicted, and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment upon each count.
His conviction was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States.
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Schenck was punished for fifteen thousand pamphlets.
Fifteen thousand.
Fifteen thousand pamphlets.
And the case wasn't ‘walked back’ in the cases of Abrams, nor Debs, nor even Whitney, neither.
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The two defendants in Abrams were sentenced to 10 and 20 years in prison.
Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Charlotte Whitney was given an indeterminate sentence of 1 to 14 years imprisonment on one count. She went to San Quentin prison.
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> years imprisonment upon each count.
> His conviction was unanimously upheld by the Supreme
> Court of the United States.
And most importantly, the Schenck decision was overruled decades later and replaced with a new test in Brandenburg v. Ohio. Schenck is no longer valid law in 1st Amendment jurisprudence.
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Well no. Since you brought it up, she was doing the equivalent of claiming that there had been a fire in a theatre a few months ago.
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The trouble with that analogy is that she wasn't on campus shouting that there was a gun. She wasn't contacting students and teachers; she posted on facebook. So she wasn't even in the "theatre"/school at all.
OTOH, if she really thought it was a big enough deal to post on facebook as a "warning" to everyone, she should have called the police. Especially if she thought school officials were lying about it.
Bottom line is that she showed poor judgment (if you're going to succumb to your conspiracy theories in the first place, it's better to go all-in so your story stays consistent, rather than just posting something half-assed on Facebook) and sometimes poor judgment ends up in criminal behavior. I'll be interested to see if this proves to be one of those cases, despite the first amendment.
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Yeah, that'd spoil the slant minion wants.
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Prior restraint is illegal, it violates her rights and after a very costly lawsuit the state will pursue trying to pretend SCOTUS never said that, there will be even more 0's on her settlement.
If an administrator was so put out having to answer questions from concerned parents, perhaps they are in the wrong job. The real crime is the assistant was off so they boss had to handle the calls.
Ohio needs to round up ever fscking Anti-Vaxxer and punish them, they are inducing panic in parents.
Then the politicians who rails against the imaginary others who are responsible for all of the bad things that happen without evidence.
Then anything Trump says because hes proven to be lying about very serious things to rile people up and panic them that MS-13 is under each and everyone of their beds.
Then all of the adherents of Qanon who go on and on about the democratic pedophile ring that Trump will bring down just as soon as he defeats the Deep State.
Parent hears mention of a gun being seen, teacher kicks it up the chain, who tell her it wasn't on campus. A mass shooting happens elsewhere & she remembers the story about a gun being seen & how she wasn't quite satisfied about the answer because people in power NEVER lie to cover their own asses.
(Aside: Kids on the bus saw another student in his yard with a pellet gun, allegedly. No details about on the way to or from school or time of day.)
Mother who is most likely convinced that man walking towards the Target behind her in the parking lot is a human trafficker, gets upset about Parkland & mentions something from months ago she head & OMG WE GOT PHONE CALLS! It sounds like they weren't that polite in responding to her concern which of course set off the ever popular the more they say no the more true it must be.
Well we told her it was just a rumor...tell me what your boss said to you 6 months ago on a thursday... you might not remember that detail but you remember that you almost were in a car accident because it upset you.
This is bullshit and one can only hope the number of 0's on her settlement keep growing. Her crime was making an employee answer phone calls & making them mad, so the found a way to punish her... and its going to bite them in the ass hard.
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"She said Summit County Sheriff Deputy Brian Breeden visited Croghan and asked her to delete her posts and to stop making new posts because she was causing public alarm."
"Coventry Superintendent Blough said if Croghan had stopped her posts in the beginning, the case wouldn’t have been necessary. She said people with safety concerns should contact her or another administrator.
“Posting on Facebook is not an effective way to get things resolved,” she said. “This case clearly shows that.″
Banbury was pleased by the jury’s decision.
“I think justice was served and I think she needs treatment,” she said of Croghan."
So posting denials on facebook was not an effective way of dealing with this??
Sooo many 0's on the lawsuit.
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Right, and that's why Trump is being prosecuted!
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Posting the government phone number of a government employee so that they can be contacted during work about the concerns of citizens isn't 'doxxing'. It's called making them do their job.
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did it really meet the "serious public inconvenience or alarm??
Huh. Most severe case of cognitive dissonance you've shown for a while. She's convicted and you're still not certain.
You have mania for "free speech" and somehow imagine that's a magic phrase which excuses all possible interference with the rights of others.
I've composed a few and ran across some links that show the actual result when idiots test the practical limits on "free speech":
To pirates especially millenials, these are life lessons / Ted talks / news:
You Can't Shout "Allahu Akbar!" in Police Station.
You Can't Shout "Fire!" in a Fire Station.
You Can't Shout "Out Of The Water!" if no shark. (From an actual incident but honest mistake so no link.)
You Can't Shout "Compete With Free!" if are costs.
You Can't Shout "Run and Die!" at teenagers. THEY'RE BACK: 'Killer clown' shouting 'run and die' threatens boys 'with knife'...
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/killer-clown-shouting-run-die-13271627
You Can't Shout [words sounding Arabic] while appearing to stab:
https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2018/11/16/screams-of-terror-fill-philly-restaurant-after-s tabbing-prank/
You can't Shout "Santa Claus isn't real!"
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2018/12/08/manarrested-protestingat-breakfast-santa-e vent-cleburne-church
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Re: did it really meet the "serious public inconvenience or alar
> Man arrested in Texas after telling kids Santa isn't
> real...
Nope. You didn't read your own story, did ya?
He was arrested for trespassing on private property, not for what he said.
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We can't punish this type of speech, because the possibility that we punish it when the citizen is IN THE RIGHT is just so disturbing.
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?!?!?
A verdict of guilt by a jury doesn't mean someone is *actually* guilty of the offense charged. Juries have found many innocent people guilty over the years.
You've never heard those stories of guys sitting in prison for murder or rape, who end up being proven innocent by new DNA tests, etc.? Guess who put those guys in prison in the first place... yep, juries.
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The "legacy speech" industry is throwing a tantrum but needs to find a new business model instead.
We're evolving into a species that doesn't bully, doesn't lie, has to be polite, isn't violent, etc. whether we like it or not. Please do not confuse my observation of this with my approval of it. It is merely the new reality.
Adapt or be targeted by the thought police.
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And the damned fools are doing it to themselves without realizing it.
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Criminalize inflammatory libel-- but with tough anti-SLAPP law
(subject to NY Times v. Sullivan standards)--
but *only* if there is a criminal equivalent to a tough anti-SLAPP law. Defendants whose speech is justified under NY Times v. Sullivan standards should be reimbursed all their defense costs, and if the alleged libel was probably true, those prosecuting it should face prison time (and other criminal penalties) three times what the alleged libeler faced.
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Fake News Results In Real Jail Time
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Appeal Does Seem Likely
It may be, since there is likely no provision in the sentencing statute permitting a ban on facebook posting.
What is missing, however, is a statement that the conviction is being appealed, probably with arguments that [a] the statute itself violates the First Amendment and [b] the application to these facts violates the First Amendment. Near v. Minnesota, 238 U.S. 697 (US 1931).
This appears the sort of case where everyone involved should have known that you should not prosecute someone for passing along rumors. Even if the rumors are untruthful and probably silly. I see an unsuccessful S:1983 action lurking here once the conviction and possibly statute are overturned. Unsuccessful mostly because the judges will find some way to apply a judicially-created immunity doctrine.
This is probably an appropriate opportunity also to insult those who feel that there was evern any appropriate justification for the result in Schenck v. U.S., 249 U.S. 47 (US 1919). It was an embarassment in 1919, and Holmens spent much of the rest of his career trying to distance himself from it without being seen to do so. And, of course, Holmes is also the author of Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (US 1927), as if you need another opportunity to be embarrassed.
So, for those of you above, referring to Schenck without derisive intent, please take this as a gratuitous insultment.
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Corrections
Erin Croghan is my daughter and I am well aware of her situation and the facts. I see and speak to her multiple tomes weekly and help her when I can filling the food cupboards she stocks every week. I offer some corrections needed in your article. thanked Erin for reporting it and said she turned it over to the Middle School. The story was NEVER a "rumor". It was an eye witness report told to Erin by one of her daughter's classmates. The Vice Principal of the Middle School testified he found the gun in some bushes at the middle school student's house. He did not say that the way he knew where to look was from my granddaughters classmate's story of seeing the gun, and only one 3rd grade boy also had a brother at the Middle School who sometimes rides home on his little brother's bus. (The witness did not know the older boy's name, but knew his brother who is also in her 3rd grade class.) Someone from the school returned Erin's call to the elementary school was returned by an unknown party (we think she was a part time counselor at the elementary school who only works on Thursdays). That call thanked Erin for reporting it and told my daughter that the gun was a broken pellet gun that was in his locker and no real threat from it. The Middle School Principal and Superintendent both denied that and the jury never heard that.
Thank you for you article, though. people should know that there may be a price to pay for "saying something if you see or hear something". Erin has appealed this conviction based on a number of points with a new attorney.
Respectively,
Michael Croghan
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