Speaking of Violence and Law
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Lawyers for the plaintiffs in a suit that opened in Oregon last week are hoping to drive home their argument that one person’s right to free speech should never supercede another person’s right to life. But the wrongful-death civil suit against the father and son who lead the White Aryan Resistance may turn out a bit more complex than that. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in a suit that opened in Oregon last week are hoping to drive home their argument that one person’s right to free speech should never supercede another person’s right to life. But the wrongful-death civil suit against the father and son who lead the White Aryan Resistance may turn out a bit more complex than that. In the suit, lawyers for the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith charge that it was at the exhortation of Thomas and John Metzger that members of their loosely knit white-supremacist group beat an Ethiopian man to death with baseball bats in Portland two years ago. The lawyers are seeking $10 million for the dead man’s family. The Metzgers, who live in Fallbrook, Calif., were not in Portland when the crime occurred and knew nothing of the victim. But the three skinheads who confessed to the murder said they were followers of the White Aryan Resistance, which had recently dispatched a recruiter to Portland, and the plaintiff’s lawyers said that the three skinheads were among those recruits. On cable television shows, at rallies and in newsletters, the group regularly excoriates blacks, Jews and other groups. But Thomas Metzger, arguing the defense for himself and his 22-year-old son, hinted that they had little or no knowledge of any recruiters sent to Portland and personally did nothing more than exercise their First Amendment rights. The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the free-speech aspects of the defense. All in all, the experts see it as a tricky case. ”This case won’t be easy to prove because there are so many elements that need to be demonstrated in linking the leaders to the acts of their followers,” said Caroline Forell, a professor at the University of Oregon Law School. ”But it has been done before and could very well happen again here.” Morris Dees, the lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, is one of those who helped do it before. In Portland, he is hoping to duplicate his organization’s 1984 victory in a wrongful-death suit against the United Klans of America in Alabama. In that case, a jury ruled that a black teen-ager had been lynched at the urging of Ku Klux Klan members and awarded the boy’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, $7 million in damages. ”More : query.nytimes.com |