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Jonathan Coulton: Sticking It to Myself

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Gus3/08/2012 5:06:12 pm PST

You can read through this:

Sex, lies and a manila envelope
Lewd photos mailed to a local official set off a political brouhaha

Excerpts:

In early April, someone mailed envelopes to a handful of local public officials. In each was a set of five grainy pictures of two naked women kissing, fondling and having oral sex. Each envelope included a simple cover sheet consisting of the handwritten initials “M.L.” and the handwritten name “Belinda Ortiz.”

Though Ortiz is the Republican Party of Florida’s Hispanic outreach director and a perennial candidate for local political office, she wasn’t one of the recipients of the envelopes. But her contacts at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce were on the mailing list. And when Ortiz saw the pictures, she was understandably upset.

“The woman photographed is NOT me,” she says in a sworn April 9 statement to the Orlando Police Department, “as I do not wear my hair curly, do not wear acrylic nails, do not have breast implants and am not in as good of shape as the woman in the photos. For the record, I have never taken or allowed pornographic photos to be taken of me.”

and

On Aug. 4, after dropping all four counts of defamation by publication, the state attorney’s office brought four other counts of defamation – for violating state statute 836.04, “Whomever speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastity, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree” – and one far-reaching count of cyberstalking Ortiz between January 2007 and May 2009.

Florida statute 836.04 was enacted in 1883. The law, according to public defender Melissa Vickers, who assisted public defender Joseph Knape on this case, is not used much. In 1894, Holmes County resident Marion Burnham was convicted of defaming Lula Burnham by accusing her of having sex with her brother, Addie Hewett, prior to her marriage. An 1896 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court reversed the charges based on lack of evidence. Ten years later, the Supreme Court upheld charges against R.B. Stutts for slandering an unmarried woman; in that case, the court found that slander did not require that a defamatory insult be heard by a third person.

“When I read that statute, and I picture what the legislative intent behind it was, I would picture people in a public place chastising her, calling her something unpleasant,” says Joseph Knape. “The hardest thing is having a jury follow the law when they themselves can’t say that they probably haven’t violated the law. I’m sure that most of us have.”