Legal News

Craigslist ?Rant? Lands Colorado Man in Criminal Trouble

By Ashby Jones

One of the more, um, amusing corners of the Craigslist world is the site’s Rants and Raves link, a place where anyone (and everyone, it seems) can just spout off on whatever he or she would like. Perhaps not surprisingly, the postings are not always the stuff of Hallmark Cards. (If you click over there, you do so with our fair warning.)

But could the mere posting of a “rant” on the site constitute criminal behavior? In Colorado at least, the answer seems “yes.”

A Thursday LA Times article chronicles the saga of one J.P. Weichel, who used the “Rants and Raves” vehicle to “vent” about his former girlfriend, with whom he was locked in a visitation dispute concerning their young daughter. On the site, Weichel allegedly accused the woman child abuse and welfare fraud and making crude comments about her sex life.

The woman said the postings were defamatory. But local authorities took it further and charged Weichel with a crime. According to the story, Colorado is one of a dwindling number of states with a criminal law against libel. While the statute is rarely invoked, Larimer County Dist. Atty. Larry Abrahamson said Colorado’s statute applied precisely to what Weichel was accused of doing. The statute carries a maximum penalty of 18 months in jail.

Not everyone’s happy about it. “Being a jerk isn’t necessarily grounds for felony prosecution,” said Mark Silverstein, legal director at the ACLU of Colorado. Weichel could not be reached for comment.

Colorado’s criminal statute holds that it is illegal to “blacken the memory of one who is dead.” Truth is not a defense in such cases, or in ones that “expose the natural defects of one who is alive.”

“It’s shocking the statute exists,” said David Lane, a First-Amendment lawyer in Denver, “and that someone’s even using it is more shocking.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 05, 2008 (boomark / email).