In federal lawsuit, New Hampshire ACLU targets criminal libel laws

It was a Facebook comment that led to an arrest warrant.

In May, Exeter resident and outspoken commentator Robert Frese took a swipe at a retiring police officer, calling him in a Facebook comment under a newspaper article “the dirtiest most corrupt cop that I have ever had the displeasure of knowing.”

Nineteen days later, the Exeter police department were pressing criminal charges. In a warrant, the police alleged that Frese “purposely communicated on a public website, in writing, information which he knows to be false and knows will tend to expose another person to public contempt,” and argued the post violated New Hampshire’s criminal libel law, a class B misdemeanor.

A public backlash followed and the charge was eventually dropped. But the law enabling it, RSA 644:11, remains on the books.

A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to change that. In a federal complaint filed Tuesday, the advocacy group argued that Frese’s arrest violated the First Amendment, and that the law invoked in the arrest is itself unconstitutional.

Read more: https://www.concordmonitor.com/ACLU-New-Hampshire-lawsuit-targets-criminal-libel-laws-22249682