Kutler, Watergate Expert to Plead; Free Speech Takes Another Blow

University of Wisconsin Emeritus Professor Stanley Kutler entered a plea agreement in the Wisconsin Case of the Week. As reported Tuesday in Isthmus, Kutler to Plead:

Stanley Kutler, the UW-Madison emeritus professor famed for his groundbreaking research into the Watergate scandal, has agreed to plead no contest to a criminal disorderly conduct charge stemming from an April 2005 incident in which he allegedly threatened to blow up a health insurance facility.

"I just want to get this taken care of," Kutler told his lawyer, Lester Pines, in court this afternoon, moments after Dane County Judge Patrick Fiedler ruled against his motion seeking to have the charges dismissed.

Kutler was charged with disorderly conduct, a Class B misdemeanor, for allegedly threatening in a phone call to blow up a Dean Health Plan office in a dispute over billing. Kutler has maintained that he made the statement out of frustration, with no genuine threat intended.

Pines had argued, in his briefs to the court, that Kutler's comment fell into the category of protected speech. He also argued that the state was unable to say precisely what speech was at issue, charging imprecisely that Kutler said "something to the effect of, 'If this doesn't get taken care of, I'm coming back and blowing up'" the health insurer's office.

Judge Fiedler went through several precedent cases that both sides identified as applicable. These established that there is no absolute right to free speech and that some speech can be prosecuted, even in the absence of other conduct. But the courts have held, said Fiedler, that "only a true threat is constitutionally punishable." Speech that is clearly hyperbolic, made in jest, or is an expression of political dissent cannot be prosecuted. (emphasis added)

Everything I know about this case and Stanley Kutler:

• I have known Professor Kutler for over thirty years and can say without equivocation that he is an honest, nonviolent, person.
• Anyone who has had a righteous disagreement or problem with an insurance company knows exactly what motivated Kutler to talk about blowing up their building and knows that they had it coming.
• The pursuit of Kutler is a serious blow to free speech.  In this time of terrorism and Patriot Acts, if we cannot tell the difference between a true violent threat and a frustrated outrage by a man with a sharp tongue who doesn't know how to set off a firecracker, we are in serious trouble.
• Whether Scott Jensen goes free or not is inconsequential compared to the violation of our freedoms when the weight of the law forces one of this country's great constitutional scholars to make a plea when obviously there was no true threat.  No one is claiming that it was a true threat.  The wrong is that the recipient of Kutler's outburst claims she felt threatened.  When you screw around with people's insurance claims you ought to be tougher than that.
• By the way, my understanding of the issue in dispute is that Kutler was right about the damn insurance claim.
• In the name of full disclosure, in my ten years of undergraduate, graduate and law school education, Stanley Kutler was one the the three finest professors I had.  The other two were George Mosse, History, and Kenneth Dolbeare, Political Science. Given the quality of the faculty and the courses I took from 1962 to 1972, that is some stiff competition.

Comments

[Morgendorfer]

Spyse Boize: Stop in the name of all that does not suck.

www.jsonline.com/news/site/weblogs.asp?id=91&entry=16438

[rw]

Why does he get a pass on threatening customer service personnel? Is there no civility in the free speech or does free speech mean I can threaten (in jest or not) the oil change guy, the airline attendant or a Senator?

I believe that if this professor was so wonderful, he would have the civility and the wisdom to control his tongue to someone he does not know or does not know him.

He should have gotten more of a fine, anger management courses and community service.

I hope he does not say these types of speech in an airport or a theater--or he will be in jail. Free speech is a right to disagree, even to condemn and call people names--but to threaten them and others is wrong.