http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/christie-blatchford-ruling-in-twitter-harassment-trial-could-have-enormous-fallout-for-free-speechWhat’s believed to be the first case in Canada of alleged criminal harassment-via-Twitter is just a judge’s decision away from being over.
After hearing closing submissions Tuesday from Chris Murphy, who represents 54-year-old Gregory Alan Elliott, Ontario Court Judge Brent Knazan is expected to rule on Oct. 6.
In the balance rides enormous potential fallout for free speech online.
Elliott is charged with criminally harassing two Toronto female political activists, Steph Guthrie and Heather Reilly, in 2012.
Allegations involving a third woman were dropped.
The graphic artist and father of four lost his job shortly after his arrest, which was well-publicized online, and if convicted, could go to jail for six months.
These are astonishing repercussions given that it’s not alleged he ever threatened either woman (or any other, according to the testimony of the Toronto Police officer, Detective Jeff Bangild, who was in charge) or that he ever sexually harassed them.
Stephanie Guthrie, right, accuses Gregory Allan Elliott of harassing her primarily through Twitter.
Indeed, Elliott’s chief sin appears to have been that he dared to disagree with the two young feminists and political activists.
He and Guthrie, for instance, initially fell out over his refusal to endorse her plan to “sic the Internet” upon a young man in Northern Ontario who had invented a violent video game, where users could punch an image of a feminist video blogger named Anita Sarkeesian until the screen turned red.
Guthrie Tweeted at the time that she wanted the inventor’s “hatred on the Internet to impact his real-life experience” and Tweeted to prospective employers to warn them off the young man and even sent the local newspaper in his town a link to the story about the game.
Elliott disagreed with the tactic and Tweeted he thought the shaming “was every bit as vicious as the face-punch game”.
Until then, the two were collegial online, with Elliott offering to produce a free poster for Guthrie’s witopoli (Women in Toronto Politics) group.
As serious as the ramifications of a conviction could be for Elliott, so could they be dire for free speech online, Murphy suggested in his final arguments.
He said the idea that all it takes to end up charged with criminal harassment is vigorous participation in online debate with those who will not brook dissent “will have a chilling effect on people’s ability to communicate, and not just on Twitter”.
In fact, Murphy said that contrary to what Guthrie and Reilly testified to at trial, they weren’t afraid of his client — as suggested by both their spirited demeanour in the witness box and their deliberate online campaign to call Elliott out as a troll.
Rather, Murphy said, they hated Elliott and were determined to silence him — not just by “blocking” his Tweets to them, but by demanding he cease even referring to them even in making comment about heated political issues.
To all this, Guthrie pointed out once in cross-examination that feelings of fear, like all feelings, “develop over time”, and snapped that she was sorry she wasn’t “a perfect victim” who behaved like a conventional victim.
The criminal harassment charge is rooted in the alleged victim’s perception of the offending conduct.
The statute says if that conduct caused the alleged victims “reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety”, that’s good enough.
Yet Guthrie and Reilly didn’t behave as though they were remotely frightened or intimidated: They convened a meeting of friends to discuss how Elliott should be publicly shamed; they bombarded their followers with furious tweets and retweets about him (including a grotesque suggestion from someone pretending she was a 13-year-old that he was a pedophile); they could and did dish it out.
“They were not vulnerable,” Murphy said once. “They are very accomplished, politically savvy women. If they can’t handle being mentioned in the tail end of a political discussion (on Twitter), then they’re in the wrong business.”
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And, he said, of the meeting both women attended in August of 2012, to discuss how Elliott would be called out, “That was a conspiracy to commit a criminal offence … they were conspiring to go out and publicly shame Mr. Elliott.”
Murphy said the case was akin to “a high school spat, except it’s adults on the Internet”, and said it is astonishing that the court should be acting as referee in an online political debate.
“If anybody was being criminally harassed in this case,” Murphy told the judge, “it was my client, it was Mr. Elliott.”
That Reilly, who was anonymous on Twitter and who directed her own volley of hateful tweets at Elliott, should come “to this court and the police and say she’s being criminally harassed is an abuse of the system.”
Prosecutor Marnie Goldenberg made only the briefest remarks, and refused to provide Postmedia with a copy of her written arguments, saying it wasn’t her practice.
