COMMENT:
It is unfortunate that there is no longer protection from the falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies in political mailings.
What should anger you, TigerandPoo, is the destruction of TRUTH and FACTS.
We've all been bombarded by the RoboCalls, push polls and glossy mailings making outrageous claims.
Since the fabrications originate from Right Wing Wack-A-Dings, you must be supporting this fiction.
Did you even notice the decision referenced the dreadful Citizens United that endorsed Oligarchy?
The Koch Funded Tea Baggers follow....
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In Mannal case, SJC rules "invalid" 1946 law on false statements in elections
Arguments before the Supreme Judicial Court were heard in May
State Rep. Brian Mannal (D-Barnstable).
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday ruled a state statute governing electoral publications is "invalid," ordering dismissal of a criminal complaint against the treasurer of Jobs First Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee.
The super PAC had targeted Rep. Brian Mannal, a Barnstable Democrat running for re-election, claiming in a mailer that Mannal "is putting criminals and his own interest above our families."
In the run-up to election day, Mannal responded by filing a criminal complaint against Melissa Lucas, the group's treasurer, claiming that the false statements the group published "could put her behind bars."
The legal action relied on a 1946 law that criminalizes any false statement designed to help or hurt a candidate for office.
The court ruled that the statue "chills the very exchange of ideas that gives meaning to our electoral system" and for those reasons it is "antagonistic to the fundamental right of free speech."
Mannal went on to win re-election by 205 votes, the high court noted. On Dec. 18, the clerk-magistrate of Falmouth District Court issued a criminal complaint against Lucas.
Arguments before the Supreme Judicial Court were heard in May.
In defense of the law, the attorney general's office argued that Mannal's criminal complaint should be dismissed because the mailer contained opinion not fact, but the statute should be preserved.
Citing precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court cases Citizens United and The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the court decided instead to address the constitutionality of the statute and found it lacking.
"As the facts of this case demonstrate, the danger of such breadth is that the statute may be manipulated easily into a tool for subverting its own justification, i.e., the fairness and freedom of the electoral process, through the chilling of core political speech," read the opinion by Justice Robert Cordy.
There was no dissenting opinion in the matter.
"Governmental efforts to supplant political counterspeech with the specter of incarceration date back to the earliest years of our constitutional democracy," Cordy wrote. He wrote, "The Commonwealth attempts to distinguish these principles with the rather remarkable argument that the election context gives the government broader authority to restrict speech. The opposite is true."
Related Content:
- See more at: http://www.capecodtoday.com/article/2015/08/07/225709-Mannal-case-SJC-rules-invalid-1946-law-false-statements-elections#sthash.3BVHg9p9.dpuf
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