Online 'Ridicule' Lands Florida Pair in Jail
by Ashley Craddock

6:02pm 29.May.97.PDT -- Taking the cyberspace metaphor one step beyond, Florida cops last week snared two cybernerds under a seldom-invoked 1940s-era state law that forbids the unsigned publication of materials subjecting someone else to ridicule, then invoked a '90s-era anti-street-gang statute to arrest them.

On 19 May, Citrus County sheriff's deputies dusted off a 1945 criminal defamation law to charge Ryan Vella and Christopher Cohen, both 19, with subjecting their band teacher to anonymous ridicule. Rather than letting the online harassment slide as a misdemeanor, the cops then dragged out the state's anti-gang law, which allowed them to take the two men into custody under third-degree felony charges.

The arrests stemmed from complaints about a Web site Vella and Cohen posted using Vella's home computer. The site said that a local high school teacher and student were homosexual, listed their email and phone numbers, and electronically intoned that the teacher "will die."

The site also showed the 12th-grade student's traditionally saccharine prom-date photo - except that the teacher's head was superimposed over the girl's face and a banner welcoming viewers to his "homosexual life" was slapped on top.

The two were released on bail - US$9,000 for Vella, $4,000 for Cohen - shortly after their arrests.

"Apparently calling someone a homosexual is the worst thing you can possibly do in Citrus County," said Robyn Blumner, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. "When the students' parents saw the site, they immediately called in the cavalry."

Apart from being obnoxious and bigoted, Vella and Cohen's apparent mistake was in the name they gave themselves - the "Wrathlords" - and not because it's straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. In Florida legal parlance, a gang is defined as "a formal or informal, ongoing organization, association, or group that has as one of its primary activities the commission of criminal or delinquent acts, and consists of three or more persons who have a common name."

As founders of the Wrathlords, which included three other current and former Lecanto High School students, Vella and Cohen were apparently unable to give up their fixation with a band teacher whom they detested. Expressing that hatred - in an earlier instance, one gang member allegedly cut the teacher's brake lines - was apparently the group's raison d'être.

"The Web site arrests were the culmination of a long series of events," Chief Assistant State Attorney Ric Ridgway said Thursday. The state attorney's office planned to announce Friday whether it will pursue the charges.

But observers say making the charges stick may prove impossible. "I guess they technically fit the definition of a gang, but good luck trying to prove it," said Investigator Wayne Hom of the San Francisco Police Department's gang task force.

And the ACLU say the arrests are a blatant violation of the pair's First Amendment rights. "Slapping them with criminal defamation charges is completely unconstitutional," said Blumner, who may represent the two men if the Florida state attorney pursues charges. "They have a right to publish material as obnoxious or insulting as they want. The appropriate remedy is a civil libel suit by the injured parties."