Internet Law
Supremacist Escapes Sanction for Internet Posts About Troutman Sanders Lawyer
Posted Jul 29, 2008, 07:41 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A federal judge has refused to sanction a white supremacist who posted the home address and telephone number of a lawyer for Troutman Sanders in Richmond, Va.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Bradford Stillman of Norfolk said the posts by white supremacist William White didn’t suggest physical harm and were less threatening because they did not ask specific individuals to act, the Roanoke Times reports.
“To the extent that White's postings are available for viewing on a variety of publicly accessible websites, and thus by potentially an endless number of people, that fact makes it less likely that the information posted on the Internet rises to the level of a true threat," he wrote in his July 25 opinion (PDF).
White had posted the personal information about lawyer Kevin Mottley because of his representation of black tenants in a fair-housing suit. The post had urged White’s followers not to do a variety of things, including calling Mottley, visiting his home, sending him hate mail or emptying his bank accounts. Mottley interpreted the admonition as an implicit message to do just the opposite.
He had testified that he hired security guards to watch his home after receiving strange phone calls, and his wife was afraid to leave the house.