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Stephen Lynch Murray v. Janelle Irwin Taylor, et al.
Paid petition · District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District, No. 4D21-2586 · judgment December 9, 2021
Before the decision, well below the 4.1% base rate, with no standout signals pointing toward a grant.
Questions presented
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Can the government deputize private actors to attack political speech and thereby abridge political speech using law and case law in civil court?
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Can a state civil court classify political speech as a crime without witness or discovery and relying on undisputed perjury, and dismiss a defamation lawsuit, whether compelled to do so by law and code of the state or with discretion, with the effect of protecting and participating as instrument in a government attack on political speech, by stripping a private citizen of traditional protections against defamation, in a special circumstance contrived by government in its own interest, to selectively deputize and bolster and reward a non-government actor, toward the purpose of using false and malicious defamation to penalize the private citizen in retaliation for speech petitioning that same government with grievances? Mankind gravitates toward the will of the majority faction delivered by the executive branch, and away from judicial processes which insulate the pursuit of abstract truth and justice, and the rights of the individual, against political incentives. These forces proving irresistible, the State of Florida has evolved a variety of publicly-supported processes for preempting the right to a jury trial and attacking citizens without due process, which consist primarily of rewarding rather than prosecuting perjury against targets of the executive branch. A key element in this is using mass communication, to turn lies and hearsay into admissible evidence, and to incite against the accused, depriving the accused not only of fair trials, but of reputation and opportunity without due process. This deputizes private citizens to do what the government is restrained from doing, by contriving the activity of private citizens and pitting them against one another through the means of opportunity, coercion, reward, and concealment of facts, and then insulating citizens so doing the will of the executive branch from designed recourse and penalties in law (generally shifting the locus of decision-making to the discretion of judges and elected officials with political incentives, and away from cumulative review by juries of peers). These are considered legitimate parts of the criminal justice process in the state of Florida.
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Are all the individual elements and the sum of these same general processes constitutional when used by the government to attack and retaliate for political speech directed toward that same government? Can a judge dismiss a civil case where the sum pares or ignores the right to petition the government with grievances?
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Florida has a new "Cyberstalk" statute which is n sufficiently vague that it can be used to arrest someone for snarky private emails to a jerk elected official about unrelated political topics and figures, and driving over a bridge to post political fliers outside a law school, particularly when bolstered a) with a standard policy of rewarding and not punishing police who lie in arrest affidavits with the consent of the majority faction, b) with political influence, and c) with the general bias of police and courts against speakers from opposing factions, in a time when national polarization infects all public interactions. Can a private citizen whose political speech is so attacked, be selectively deprived by state courts, law, and case law, of a remedy necessary to ex post facto protect his right to petition his government with grievances?
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If the "Cyberstalk" statute is so vague that it is likely to result in the events in this case, then whether it is enforceable might turn on whether the state can insulate errors from judicial review and appeal, whether errors can be cured immediately after the fact, or whether they are insulated from any adequate remedy ever by judicial rules, laws and case law, or as a practical matter by time and costs of appeal and political resistance. Is the entirety of the design not just a freak event or error, but a designed means through the "Cyberstalk" statute (in concert with other means like overlooked perjury), to criminalize political speech, which design incorporates and necessarily relies on the discretion and present ruling of the Florida circuit court? And is the circuit court, as the final arm of government in necessary for this attack on political speech, bound to refrain from dismissing complaints against the end result of this process, and turn it over for review by a jury of private citizens, in the special asserted case of political speech?
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If, with public support, false and malicious defamation becomes gentrified as a designed part of the criminal justice process, which can be delegated to non-government actors and insulated to deprive targets of reputation and opportunity without due process, can that same process be weaponized to define political speech as criminal and punish it without witness or discovery, using perjury, and even if the originating criminal classification is abandoned at the discretion of judges or prosecutors, like when no charge is ever filed? After this case failed in criminal court (after Petitioner had already suffered from it, was denied speech rights for five months, and had his future speech rights chilled), the first actor in this case to knowingly and explicitly classify political speech as criminal and cause for arrest was a civil defense attorney who wrote that in a proposed order containing false and misleading statements. That order classifying political speech as criminal was then signed by the circuit court, affirmed by the district court of appeals, and rejected for review by the Florida Supreme Court as not in their jurisdiction.
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Can judges in civil court define speech as criminal
Counsel of record
For petitioner
Stephen Lynch Murray
For respondent
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Case
Conference history
Distributed for 1 conference
Proceedings
- Apr 18 2022Petition DENIED.
- Mar 23 2022DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 4/14/2022.
- Jan 27 2022Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due March 4, 2022)