Should you receive a jail sentence for being an idiot on Twitter? Apparently so! Liam Stacey, the 21 year old who tweeted “LOL, Fuck Muamba. He’s dead” after the Bolton Wanderers’ collapse at White Hart Lane is off to spend 56 days in prison for this and other (unpleasant) “racially offensive” tweets. Cue much outrage everywhere.
The boy appears to be a moron, but should that be an imprisonable offence? I cannot see what crime has been committed here, save the trumped-up charge of causing needless and witless offence. Tedious as this may be it ought not to be a matter for the authorities. So I agree with everything Nick Cohen writes here:
I’ve no doubt that he’s a vile man, who by the sound of it was drunk at the time he posted, but what remains disturbing about the case is that the Crown offered no evidence that Stacey had incited racial violence or any other crime. That his speech was racist was enough to send him down. […] [T]he authorities neither trust nor respect the rest of the population. They do not understand that society has its own sanctions, and does not need detectives and prosecutors to police free speech. As it turned out, Stacey’s followers were more than capable of denouncing him of their own accord. Their condemnations were so robust he tried first to delete his posts, and then deny that he had written them. Far from being latent racists, willing to don the white hood at the first opportunity, his followers proved themselves thoughtful citizens.
Quite so. Those people endorsing this prosecution – and this conviction – should be ashamed of themselves just as Mr Stacey should be ashamed of his own actions and prejudices.The British state has moved far beyond the good, old advice that ‘the best answer to bad arguments is better arguments’. The danger of its power grab is not only that our illiberal ‘liberal establishment’ will use their excessive power to censor speech in the public interest — although it does just that in the libel courts all the time. As worrying a possibility is that its assaults on free speech — even repugnant and boorish speech — will strengthen the monster it wishes to tame.
PS: Apparently Mr Stacey pled guilty. I do wish someone would test these people’s nerve by pleading not-guilty in these kinds of case.
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