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from the laugh-and-(some-of)-the-world-laughs-with-you dept.
'The Onion' filed a real brief with the Supreme Court supporting man jailed for making fun of cops:
When was the last time you've read an amicus brief? If you're not involved in the legal profession, chances are you may have never actually spent precious time reading one. This amicus brief (PDF) could change that. It was submitted by The Onion, which describes itself in the brief as "the world's leading news publication" with "4.3 trillion" readers that maintains "a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires." [...]
The Onion, of course, is the popular parody website that once named Kim Jong-un as the sexiest man alive. Its team has filed a very real amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of Anthony Novak, who was arrested and jailed for four days after briefly running a Facebook page parodying the police department of Parma, Ohio back in 2016.
[...] Despite writing the brief in the same voice its publication uses, and despite filling it with outlandish claims and hilarious quips, The Onion made a very real argument defending the use of parody and explaining how it works:
"Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original. The Sixth Circuit's decision in this case would condition the First Amendment's protection for parody upon a requirement that parodists explicitly say, up-front, that their work is nothing more than an elaborate fiction. But that would strip parody of the very thing that makes it function.
I highly recommend reading the brief yourself [PDF]. [hubie]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday October 09 2022, @01:59PM (5 children)
Understanding this to be a pretty simple case, of the freedom to parody, I find it a little scary that this went all the way to the top. It should've never made it to the 1st appeal. The 1st trial should've been decided in favor of the prisoner, and the 1st appeal denied, end of story, if that much. More like, the man should've never been jailed, and the cops and whoever else who wanted to do that should've been stopped before they could, and themselves reviewed with an eye towards firing them if warranted. What's going on here that makes this case so hard that it needs to go before the Supreme Court?
We should re-establish a clear standard: jail is for criminal, and only the dangerous ones who might hurt themselves or others. Fines are the way to handle civil matters. Not that the creator of the parody should've been fined either, but jail? I've heard of officialdom gone wild and jailing people for overdue library books, feeding coins into parking meters, and not mowing the lawn, and other incredibly petty offenses. Every time it happens, officialdom ends up very sorry they overreacted.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by EEMac on Sunday October 09 2022, @03:40PM (1 child)
The process is the punishment.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2022, @08:07PM
Punishment for some, much profit for others. The legal system is the epitome of featherbedding
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DrkShadow on Sunday October 09 2022, @11:21PM (1 child)
spoiler: it didn't. It was dismissed very, very early on.
However, he did spend some days in jail, and for that he's suing. That was dismissed, too -- and he's been intently bubbling it up.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday October 10 2022, @02:45AM
The lawsuit in my eyes has pretty strong grounds:
1. The cops didn't like him, because he was making fun of them. But that's not a crime.
2. The cops knew he hadn't committed a crime, but arrested him anyways. If I'm understanding the timing correctly, they chose to arrest him on a Friday evening right before a holiday weekend, so as to maximize how much time he'd spend in jail before he'd be arraigned and be offered bail.
3. As someone who lives near Parma, OH and knows some ex-cops in the area, the cops there are absolutely corrupt enough that they'd arrest a man they know to be innocent of any crime as a form of harassment.
If this case is decided in favor of the cops, then what they're saying is that it's perfectly legal for cops to arrest anybody at all for no reason at all other than the cops don't like them. Like, you didn't know you were going out with a cop's ex that the cop is still not over, so the cop makes something up and arrests you right before Thanksgiving so you'll spend your long holiday weekend in jail. And there's no incentive for that cop to not do that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Funny) by number11 on Monday October 10 2022, @04:30AM
Novak was found "not guilty". He'd spent 4 days in jail. Now the question is, can he sue the people who did it? Mostly police get "qualified immunity", which means "no matter how stupid, if there's not an actual court case saying otherwise, the cops can't be held responsible."
The "others" are the Parma police, who felt terribly hurt that someone would make fun of them.