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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (69749)	12/19/2002 7:51:31 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I happened upon this column this morning. You had posted a while ago about prisoners and the internet. Thought you might find it interesting. Unlock free speech A badly crafted Arizona law trampled First Amendment rights. A federal court judge has temporarily blocked an Arizona law that aimed to keep sympathetic information about inmates off the Internet. Critics view the injunction as an early Christmas gift to some of the worst felons in Arizona's prison system - a view that completely misses the point. In limiting the information about inmates on the Internet, the Arizona law also limits the free speech rights of anyone - inmate, lobbyist or ordinary citizen - who would put information about the convict on the Internet. For that reason, the law is likely to be found unconstitutional. The American Civil Liberties Union, acting on behalf of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, filed a lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Corrections last July. It contended the state law illegally seeks to regulate free speech outside prison walls. Some critics of the temporary injunction, issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Earl H. Carroll, are no doubt under the impression that inmates in Arizona prisons have direct access to the Internet. They do not. Inmates are not sitting in their cells with a personal computer and an Internet connection. They cannot surf the net or exchange e-mail with anyone. What they can do, however, is send information about themselves to the Canadian group, which then sets up a Web site for that prisoner. Inmates can use the space to discuss their cases or request pen pals. Anyone who wanted to do so could then write to the inmate through the regular mail. Arizona law says that if information about a prisoner appears on the Internet, the inmate can be punished. One of the attorneys who challenged the law says that potential punishment in effect imposes restrictions on what those outside the state can publish on their Web sites. The punishment can be severe: It includes reducing or eliminating early release time the prisoner has earned. The Canadian coalition has been publishing Web sites for each inmate on Arizona's Death Row, whether or not the inmate requests it. It says Arizona's law embodies a double standard by permitting the Department of Corrections to post inmate records on its Web site but making it illegal for anyone else to post any other version of the inmate's information on another Web site. The Arizona law that is now blocked from enforcement was a poorly crafted bill that resulted from the emotional appeal of a Tucson woman whose husband had been murdered. Stardust Johnson's outrage at discovering her husband's killer portrayed on the Internet as a kindly animal-lover is entirely understandable, but it is not grounds for disassembling the First Amendment rights of people who are not killers. Mrs. Johnson is the widow of University of Arizona music professor Ron Johnson, who was murdered in 1995. The Web site dedicated to the convicted killer, Beau Greene, "gave no clue he was a brutal murderer," Mrs. Johnson said in a story in Wednesday's Star. "Instead he represented himself as a lonely man holding a cuddly kitten who was misunderstood." Any victim, or any member of a victim's family, would likely react with the same degree of anger. Mrs. Johnson channeled her outrage into the law, which the federal court has now temporarily blocked. That law says "An inmate shall not send mail to or receive mail from a communication service provider or remote computing service." By temporarily blocking Arizona from enforcing that law, Judge Carroll wisely noted that the law infringes upon the First Amendment rights of those who have created the Web sites. We do not minimize the despair of those who were victimized by brutal, remorseless felons, but emphasis should be placed on controlling those felons in ways that do not violate the constitutional rights of free citizens or groups with whom officials may happen to have political or philosophical differences.