Activists accused of using Web for 'terror' campaign against Somerset company
BY BRIAN T. MURRAY

In a novel First Amendment battle, a federal judge has been asked to decide
whether free speech protections can shield seven animal rights activists
from prosecution on charges that they used the Internet to promote a
"terrorist" campaign against a New Jersey research lab.

Members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA or SHAC have urged U.S.
District Judge Mary Cooper in Trenton to dismiss charges that they conspired
to violate federal law by encouraging vandalism and harassment against
Huntingdon Life Sciences of Somerset County. The case centers around a Web
site campaign SHAC operated over the past several years calling for "direct
action" to protest Huntingdon's testing of chemicals and pharmaceuticals on
animals.

SHAC listed "Top Twenty Terror Tactics," posted the names and addresses of
employees and clients of Huntingdon and celebrated acts of vandalism against
them, according to a federal indictment handed up last year.

Both prosecutors and defense lawyers agree the case, slated for trial in
June, will test the extent to which Internet speech is protected by the
First Amendment in an age of expanding communication technology and new laws
to thwart terrorism. In the mix is a little-known law, the Animal Enterprise
Terrorism Act, which Congress adopted to specifically deal with an upsurge
in violent animal rights activity directed at businesses that use animals.

"The First Amendment applies to the Internet. Web sites are tantamount to
newspapers. ... It's in every sense the community newspaper," said defense
lawyer Andrew Erba, urging Cooper at a recent court hearing to dismiss the
case before trial on free speech grounds. Cooper reserved decision.

Invoking images of early American revolutionaries printing pamphlets urging
revolt, Erba and attorney Isabelle McGinty called SHAC's Web site nothing
more than protected political hyperbole. Although arguing there is no proof
of a unified effort by the "SHAC 7" to create the Web site, let alone a
conspiracy, the lawyers compared their activism to the civil rights boycotts
of the 1950s and 1960s.

"Where's the crime? It is free speech communication. It is protected
communication. It is not a criminal act," McGinty told Cooper.

The crime, according to the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, is that the sole
purpose of SHAC has been an illegal conspiracy to shut down and damage
Huntingdon by means of harassment and violence. The indictment contends the
SHAC 7 engaged in stalking and used "a facility in interstate and foreign
commerce" -- the Internet -- to incite sympathizers to take illegal actions
against Huntingdon.

"The purpose of the SHAC Web site was to provide information to SHAC
sympathizers and to incite them to cause physical harm to property and
emotional harm to individuals, all in furtherance of driving HLS out of
business," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles McKenna and Ricardo Solano wrote
in legal briefs submitted to Cooper.

One Web site call to action by SHAC in 2001 prompted activists to toss rocks
through the windows of a Huntingdon employee's home and vandalize two cars,
said prosecutors. That same day, the tires of another employee's car were
slashed, and his home was spray-painted.

Solano also told Cooper that SHAC used its site to organize an e-mail blitz
on Huntingdon's offices, a tactic known as a "Zombie attack" that resulted
in an overload of their computer system.

"It falls outside the First Amendment because it falls into a pattern of
intimidation, ... the intentional act of targeting people. Essentially,
their lives became a hell," Solano said.

A lack of criminal case law on the issues prompted prosecutors and defense
lawyers alike to rely on federal civil law to bolster their arguments.
Prosecutors drew parallels between SHAC activities and two cases of
violence-laced speech that federal appeals courts said went beyond First
Amendment protections.

In a 1997 ruling, a lawsuit was upheld against a firm that published the
book, "Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors." The suit
was filed by the family of three people killed in Maryland in 1993 by a
contract killer who used the book as a manual.

In a 2002 ruling, anti-abortion activists were held liable for a Web site
that included Wild West-style wanted posters of abortion doctors, including
the crossed-out photographs of doctors who were murdered. The federal court,
acting on a lawsuit filed by doctors and clinics, said the activists were
liable for damages because their works were illegal threats, not free
speech.

"It's vastly different than what the government alleges these individuals
(SHAC) did on their Web site. Doctors were killed. You do not have that
level of activity here," Erba said.

McGinty said the SHAC case is more akin to the boycott conducted by the
NAACP of white-owned businesses in Clairborne County, Miss., between 1966
and 1972.

The U.S. Supreme Court found the NAACP not liable for financial losses
suffered by local merchants, despite the fact some blacks who violated the
boycott were targeted with violence. The Supreme Court ruled that, although
liability can be found in cases of illegal activity, the Clairborne boycott
was largely nonviolent, lawful and protected activity.

The seven SHAC members indicted include Darius Fullmer, who once called
himself the head of the New Jersey chapter of SHAC, and John McGee, of
Edison. Three other defendants, Kevin Kjonaas, Lauren Gazzola and Jacob
Conroy, are former New Jersey residents. Also charged were Joshua Harper of
Seattle and Andrew Stepanian of Huntington, N.Y.