💰 It’s Time to Stop Arresting People for Trolling the Government: Criminal defamation charges for criticizing officials on social media can result in fines and even jail time in some US states.

TL;DR

After Robert Frese posted a nasty Facebook comment about a police officer in 2018, police obtained a warrant to arrest him. Although the police department dropped its complaint after state officials determined there was insufficient evidence that he had made the statements with actual malice, Frese asked a federal judge to find New Hampshire’s criminal defamation law unconstitutional, arguing that the threat of a third prosecution under the statute chills his speech. As Frese’s lawyers wrote in his lawsuit challenging New Hampshire laws, as politicians increasingly bemoan “fake news,” criminal defamation laws “could become regular tools for policing online discourse

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