Webmaster Chris Wilson, who gained the enmity of the Bush administration by offering to trade porn for atrocity photos with U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been ordered released on bail by Florida's Second District Court of Appeals.
"We just got a phone call about 10 minutes ago from the clerk of the Florida Second District Court of Appeals – that's the intermediate court of appeal in Florida – that they were telephonically ordering his immediate release from custody, with a written opinion to follow," announced John Weston, one of Wilson's attorneys, shortly after 1 p.m. Pacific time, "so we don't have the written opinion yet; we don't know on what basis they ruled or what their order is going to be.
"It's been one of the fastest-moving fights Weston and his firm, including Florida-based Lawrence Walters, Wilson's primary attorney, have engaged in, with Wilson's bail having been revoked for allegedly committing a second "crime" – obscenity – identical to his first offense for which he hadn't even been convicted yet!
"We kept filing new writs and emergency stay applications in higher courts a day or two after we filed in the lower courts," Weston said. "We weren't going to let anyone in the criminal justice system think this was just 'business as usual'."
"Chris was out on bail for alleged obscenity charges in connection with a website, and while out on bail, even though he was no longer a resident of the relevant county [Polk], they allege that he violated the Florida obscenity laws again in connection with new images that were on the website, and they revoked his bail and detained him," Weston recounted. "That was on Dec. 16. A few days later, I think on the 20th, we filed a habeas corpus petition along with an emergency application for stay in the court of appeals, alleging both violations of the various bail and detention laws in Florida and a major First Amendment argument on the basis of the fact that this was a prior restraint, the fact being that somebody while out on an obscenity charge could get busted for an obscenity charge, on which no final determination had been made – no jury trial, no nothing."
Things moved rapidly from that point. While waiting for the Second District Court of Appeals to rule on their motions, Weston and partners filed an emergency application for stay of the remand in the Florida Supreme Court on the 22nd, based exclusively on the First Amendment issues, which application was denied the following day. Then, on Christmas Eve, the attorneys filed an application to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the justice charged with handling emergency matters for the Eleventh Circuit, asking for a stay of the trial court order remanding him to custody, which Justice Kennedy denied without opinion on Christmas morning.
The Supreme Court was remarkably receptive," Weston complimented, "in the sense that they stayed open Christmas Eve to receive our papers; we got them to them about 9:30 or 10 o'clock East Coast time, and obviously they processed them or whatever, but they denied it without opinion, and my guess is that it was procedurally premature, because we were really moving faster, in a sense, than almost any case in history with respect to all this. We knew it was a long shot, but we wanted to do everything we could to try to get Chris out for the holidays. I mean, he's just a human being who's sitting in jail for nothing more than expressing himself."
Not having yet seen the appeals court order, Weston was unable to comment on what basis his petition and motion were granted – a particularly important point, since depending on what the court said, Wilson could remain in jeopardy if the Polk County sheriff decides in future that he's committed the same "offense."
"We're biting our fingernails now, because we don't know whether the court of appeal let him out on just traditional bail detention issues, because in our judgment, neither proper procedures nor proper quanta of evidence were utilized, or whether it was on the basis of the First Amendment," Weston explained. "From the client's perspective, we're delighted he's out; we certainly hope it was on the basis of the First Amendment because that would preclude their trying to put him back in for alleged obscenity violations until and unless a jury comes to a conclusion that he violated the law, but we just don't know."
"Everybody in our firm worked enormously hard," Weston noted. "Larry [Walters], Randy [Garrou] and I worked all day Friday when our offices were closed and we worked Christmas Eve, but FALA [the First Amendment Lawyers Association] gave us a lovely amicus brief and Jeff Douglas was very helpful in the trial court, so we're very grateful to everyone and we'll certainly keep our fingers crossed that the result we got will be not only of short term value, but valuable for everybody for the long term."
