A blogger in New Jersey named Harold “Hal” Turner posted a rant on his blog that three federal
appellate judges “deserve to be killed” because they upheld a ban on handguns in Chicago. He
had a long career as an Internet radio shock jock, neo-Nazi, racist, advocate of lynching blacks
and Latinos, and Holocaust-denier. He was arrested in June 2009 by Federal officials for
threatening to assault and murder the judges. He defended himself by arguing that his blog
postings were protected by the First Amendment and that he had been extreme in his rhetoric at
the urging of the FBI, for whom he worked as an informant about white supremacist groups.
After two mistrials, he was convicted at the third and served three years in Federal prison. He
was released in 2012 to six months of house arrest and is prohibited from Internet radio
programming for the next three years.
What will be an ideal response?
1. Does this conviction sound justified to you, from what you learn here? Should people like
Turner have the right to make such remarks in any forum, whether an Internet blog or at
a public rally? Even if they had a First Amendment right to such speech, would that
speech be ethical?
2. As Turner was in New Jersey and the judges were in Chicago, it sounds as if he was
trying to incite violence against the judges, although modern transportation would have
made it easy for him to travel to Chicago. Assuming his only goal was to incite others to
commit the murders, should that be protected free speech? Is it ethical speech?
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