Dog fight videos called free speech [View All]

[sugapablo]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06299/733101-85.stm

The lawyer for a man convicted of distributing videos of dog fighting in the first case of its kind in the country argued to an appeals court yesterday that what her client sold was an expression of free speech.

"This is not a case about animal cruelty," said Karen S. Gerlach, the public defender handling the appeal. Instead, she told a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Robert J. Stevens was the target of an overly broad criminal statute designed to target sexual fetishists.

The court took the matter under advisement and will issue an opinion at a later date.

Mr. Stevens, of Pittsville, Va., was the first defendant in the country to go to trial on the charges. He was convicted in January 2005 in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh of three counts of selling videos that depicted animal cruelty and was sentenced to 37 months in prison.

I'm all for free speech and all but...