LUTHMANN NOTE: I have every interest in making judges justify the power to imprison someone for his words. A constitutional exception requires an argument that survives examination. Public disgust cannot supply the missing analysis. Boyne is right to demand that scrutiny, and Mullins should expect it from anyone concerned about Connecticut’s speech prosecutions. Richard Palmer’s reasoning deserves examination sentence by sentence. The court should answer the criticism through law, evidence, and a defensible constitutional standard. An “Uppity” defendant does not relieve a judge of the obligation to get the Constitution right. This piece is “Richard Palmer’s Uppity Connecticut Blacks.”
NOTE: This piece is written in the classical style of the Blog and is intended to offend. Reader discretion is advised.
Paul Boyne wants Raheem Mullins to clean up Connecticut’s First Amendment constitutional shitshow. Start with * State v. Liebenguth*. David Liebenguth twice directed the words
Judge Hernandez convicted Liebenguth. Appellate Judges Henry Sheldon and Alexandra DiPentima reversed the breach-of-peace conviction, over Robert Devlin’s dissent; the separate witness-tampering conviction remained intact. Palmer’s court restored the speech conviction while Richard Robinson was chief justice. Mullins sat on that court. Boyne was crisp: “Raheem’s name is on the judicial roster, and he now leads the institution responsible for this jewdicial precedent. SCOTUS says the Constitution is colorblind. What the heck are they doing? Following Management’s directives.” Read Palmer beside Alito’s * Louisiana v. Callais*, where Thomas’s concurrence invokes a “color-blind Constitution.” That redistricting decision doesn’t govern fighting words. The comparison exposes the conceit: constitutional condemnation of racial sorting in one setting, judicial predictions about racial retaliation helping withdraw speech protection in another.
Alito supplied the cleaner rule in * Matal v. Tam*: “Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.” The Nigger word’s ugliness cannot finish the constitutional inquiry.
Palmer now chairs Connecticut’s Public Defender Services Commission. Boyne wants Mullins and his colleagues to overrule Liebenguth when the issue returns, but he doubts the institution will permit that reckoning. He believes outside interests constituting what he calls “Jewdicial Management” have ensured that the Blacks will remain Uppity in the Nutmeg State. His demand to Mullins stands without it: “Raheem, defend the constitutional boundary. Article VI binds your court to the federal Constitution. Palmer’s opinion has had enough institutional jew-spectability. Confront its reasoning, or announce to the world that the Connecticut Jewdiciary leaves defendants to pay for First Amendment crimes.”
