Jury rules against Westboro cultists

URGENT
Jury awards father $2.9 million in funeral protesters case
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ
Associated Press Writer
BALTIMORE (AP) — A grieving father won a $2.9 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals out of a belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.

 

The church and its members maintained that they did nothing wrong. They based their legal defense on the First Amendment, arguing that their protests were constitutionally protected. Their attorneys told jurors yesterday that Westboro members were expressing closely held religious beliefs about an immoral society, including the military, that has endorsed homosexuality.

Jonathan Katz, the attorney for the church and one of its founders, said that members followed state law during their protest in Westminster because they stood on public property about 1,000 feet from the funeral.

The church's controversial protests have prompted at least 22 states to enact or propose laws to limit the rights of protesters at funerals. Only months after Matthew Snyder's death, Maryland passed a law prohibiting people from picketing within 100 feet of a funeral, memorial, burial or procession.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-westboro1031,0,7191706.story?coll=bal_tab01_layout

I'm sure the ACLU will file Amicus Briefs for the next decade on behalf of the Church of Hate.

Don't forget to send a special contribution to the ACLU for this one, F_B. Without your support this type of conduct will not continue to be protected.

 

Congrats to this father. I hope others join him in suing. These people picketed a church in my town last year. They are hateful...They have their own spin on who is going to hell and why, and they are...just. plain. nuts. and. just. plain. wrong.

 

Great.

Sooner or later, somebody still needs to work these fuckers over with a baseball bat.

Carry a couple of them off in rubber bags, that will put an end to their bullshit.

 

We can always count on Starman to be the voice of reason.

 

As long as they continue the strategy of picketing military funerals, I have little doubt at some point they'll encounter a father, brother or uncle who owns a gun, and knows how to use it.

And no jury in the world will convict.

 

Yab, there's no need for a shot at Fenian on this thread.

Disgust for the Phelps' cult has no political boundries.

 

Their freedom of speech just cost them 2.9 million. Good.

Personally, I kinda like the little preamble in our Charter

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Freedom of speech is not absolute.

 

They'll never pay a nickel, of course.

Juries can award $100,000,000,000,000,000,000 in damages against them and it won't make any difference.

A few of them get put into traction for a few years, maybe they'll get the point.

 

Starman, you may or may not be right. But it still sends a message.

And although I'm against capital punishment, a good old fashion horsewhipping would warm the cockles of my heart.

Scum of the earth.

 

Start taking up donations. They claim they're going to picket the funerals of the students killed in the N.C. beach house fire.