Criminal libel

[Volokh, Eugene]

        From http://www.sltrib.com//06162000/nation_w/nation_w.htm:

                . . .

                        [Ian] Lake[, a high school student,] put up a
profanity-laced home page in
                    early May that, among other things, called several
                    female classmates "sluts," referred to one school
                    official as the "town drunk" and questioned the
                    competency of some faculty members. On May
                    18, Beaver County sheriff's deputies arrested him
                    and seized his computer, sending it to the state
                    crime lab for analysis.
                        The teen spent the next seven nights in a
                    juvenile detention facility in Cedar City, then was
                    sent to Southern California to live with his
                    grandparents. Charges of criminal slander and
                    criminal libel, both class B misdemeanors, were
                    recommended to Beaver County Attorney Leo
                    Kanell.
                        Kanell says Lake has not yet been formally
                    charged and that the slander count probably will
                    be thrown out because it involves verbal, not
                    written, defamation. But the boy could face a
                    criminal libel charge when he returns from
                    California to appear for a juvenile court hearing
                    Tuesday in Beaver. If Lake is indicted, it would
                    mark Utah's first libel case involving the Internet.

                . . .

                    The most recent prominent criminal libel case in
                    Utah was in 1987 when then-Salt Lake County
                    Attorney Ted Cannon was convicted for slurs he
                    made about a reporter. He served 30 days in jail.

                . . .
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