First Amendment Attorney Struggles to Keep Speech

And Client Free

 

By Joshua B. Good

Monday, Jan. 15, 2007

 

      In totalitarian countries such as Cuba, China and Iran, the censors shut down publications they deem unfit.

      In Polk County, Florida, they take them over.

    That was the outcome of an obscenity case handled by First Amendment Attorney Lawrence G. Walters, who negotiated a plea deal to keep his client out of prison. Walters said the case left him feeling good about how he had defended Christopher Wilson, who faced more than 300 years in prison for running a porn web site called www.nowthatsfuckedup.com. But Walters said he was ambivalent about the impact on free speech.

      “Ultimately we have to do things for our clients that

 aren’t beneficial for the free speech cause,” Walters said in an interview with www.bannedmagazine.com. “If I had my druthers I would have liked to go to trial, beat down these guys, sue them and make them pay my client a million dollars.”

      Instead, Wilson avoided any jail term, moved from Polk County to Orlando and agreed not to operate a pornography web site for five years.

Wilson’s case at first garnered national media attention because he posted images of Iraqis killed by U.S. soldiers in exchange for the soldiers getting free access to the web site. Walters said he was ready to prove at trial that Wilson was targeted because Pentagon and White House officials wanted the war dead images removed from the internet. Walters said he had not taken any depositions in the case, but had received the information privately about military and Bush administration involvement. He did not disclose his sources or offer further proof of federal government involvement in the case.

There was no national newspaper interest when the Wilson case was settled in January of 2006, according to a search of a LexisNexis newspaper database. Since then the Polk County Sheriff’s Office has operated the web site as propaganda. Viewers see a sheriff’s badge and a get-tough-on-porn warning that Polk County prosecutes obscenity cases.

Polk County is mainly rural, with orange groves, phosphate-mining pits and a military bombing range. It is located between Tampa and Orlando.

Walters, based in the Orlando suburb of Altamonte Springs, has seen a number of free speech cases from Polk County. In 1999, he defended Tammy Robinson, who operated an erotic web site at www.beckalynn.com. She received a death threat via email and called the Polk County Sheriff’s Office for help, Walters said. Instead, she was arrested on obscenity charges and sheriff’s officials attempted to have her two children taken away from her, according to Walters. Florida child welfare authorities refused to take away her children, prosecutors dropped the case and Robinson moved to Tampa, Walters said. Robinson worked at a Beef O’Brady’s Restaurant in Tampa, according to her blog, beckalynn.livejournal.com.

      Walters has also defended fortune tellers in Daytona Beach, Outlaw motorcycle gang members who were prohibited from wearing their colors at Bike Week in Daytona, hippy Rainbow Family members harassed by the U.S. Forest Service, street performers in St. Augustine, Florida, online gambling web sites and American firms that ran the online casinos’ ads, and a woman who was ticketed by a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper because her bumper sticker said “Fuck You You Fucking Fuck.”

      Currently, Walters is defending Karen Fletcher, a Pennsylvania woman accused of obscenity. Fletcher, who is in her 50s, did not post any pictures or videos online, but wrote fictional stories about the rape, torture and murder of children, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

      Walters sees a greater threat to the First Amendment than rural Florida sheriffs or zealous federal prosecutors. He predicts a hostile U.S. Supreme Court if President George W. Bush gets to appoint another justice.

“If we don’t see a change in the presidential administration or if a justice dies or retires before 2008, we’re going to see real problems with the First Amendment,” he said.

Lawrence Walters’ web site is www.firstamendment.com.

Joshua B. Good can be reached at editor@bannedmagazine.com.

 

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