Purdue University Must Be Proud

From the Indianapolis Star: Purdue student convicted of Bush threats

After an afternoon of deliberations, a federal jury Thursday convicted Vikram Buddhi of 11 counts of using the Internet to threaten American leaders and the nation's infrastructure.

Buddhi, an Indian national who has spent a decade studying at Purdue University in West Lafayette, never disputed writing online messages such as, "Call for the assassination of GW Bush."

Rather, the jury in U.S. District Court in Hammond was asked to decide whether Buddhi's comments were true threats or part of a crude online protest of the Iraq War that should be protected by free speech rights.

The jury ruled that a reasonable person reading Buddhi's messages online could conclude that he intended to harm the president, the vice president, their wives and the secretary of defense, and to blow up various power plants and methods of mass transit.

Buddhi is expected to be sentenced later this year, but it's not yet clear how long a term of imprisonment he faces.

Buddhi never took the stand in his three-day trial, and the defense offered only one witness, an attorney who had located other threatening messages on the same financial news message board Buddhi used.

Secret Service Special Agent Wade Gault testified the case would have set a new standard for speech if Buddhi had not been punished for exhorting assassination.
The five offensive messages appeared on Yahoo Finance message boards in December 2005 and January 2006. At least three people reported them to the Secret Service.

It's a strange defense. "But, I made these threats on the internet! That makes it all O.K., right?"

Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Benson said Buddhi must be held accountable for the words he chose to write on his computer and publicly post for anyone in the world to read.

"What is this? Is the Internet the wild, wild West, where you can say anything? That's not the way it's worked out," Benson said. "It's the same as sending a letter."

And if Buddhi's speech was purely political, why call for the rape of first lady Laura Bush, Benson said.

"What kind of political speech is raping women? How is that possibly connected to any type of political speech that has any merit?" Benson said. "It's meant to scare the hell out of people who read it."

This Buddhi sounds like a lovely individual.

It is sort of strange that this case hasn't received more attention from the left or right.