A New York appeals panel is upholding the e-mail impersonation conviction of the son of a famous Dead Sea Scrolls scholar — setting aside contentions that the e-mails were constitutionally protected satiric hoaxes or pranks.
Defendant Raphael Golb, who was sentenced to six months, is the son of historian Norman Golb. The younger Golb, unhappy with scholastic attacks on his father’s research, faked e-mails of his father’s vocal rivals, sent them to New York University and University of California, Los Angeles administrators, faculty and even some students. One of those impersonating e-mails portrayed a rival scholar as admitting “plagiarism” in his own work.
But the appeals court found Tuesday that the younger Golb’s First Amendment rights were not breached.
“Defendant was not prosecuted for the content of any of the emails, but only for giving the false impression that his victims were the actual authors of the e-mails. The First Amendment protects the right to criticize another person, but it does not permit anyone to give an intentionally false impression that the source of the message is that other person,” the court ruled.
The court added: “The statutes criminalized the act of impersonation and its unlawful intent, not the content of speech falsely imputed to the victims.”
Eugene Volokh, a UCLA legal scholar, wrote that the conviction was reasonable.
“To be sure, that usually leads to civil liability, but nothing in the court’s decision suggests that criminal liability in such cases is impermissible, especially when the law is limited to relatively clearly identifiable falsehoods, such as falsely claiming to be someone you are not,” he said.
The appeals panel upheld 29 of the 30 charges against the younger Golb.
Ron Kuby, the defendant’s attorney, said he would appeal the decision to New York’s top court.
He said he client was prosecuted under New York fraud statutes that were written before the internet was born.
“They are saying anybody who writes under an assumed name on the internet can be prosecuted, if they decide to prosecute,” Kuby said in a telephone interview. “That’s an abomination of the First Amendment.”
The defendant’s sentence has been stayed pending the resolution of his appeals.
Court Upholds Conviction in Dead Sea Scrolls E-Mail Impersonation Case
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Court Upholds Conviction in Dead Sea Scrolls E-Mail Impersonation Case
