Teen's Felony Case Thrown Out
The case of an Oklahoma teen who was charged with a felony for writing a violent short story about attacking his school has been dismissed by a judge who ruled that prosecutors failed to prove the teen actually intended to commit the act.
Citing a lack of evidence showing malicious intent, Judge William Hetherington issued his ruling Friday afternoon, bringing to close a case that has sparked controversy over its free speech implications.
Now, after tens of thousands of dollars spent fighting the charge, Brian Robertson is free, but the accusation that he broke the law will stay with him. Under Oklahoma law, if a case carries on for more than a year, a felony charge remains on the defendant's record, even if the case is dismissed. The felony gets expunged from the record only if the defendant is acquitted following a trial.
As reported on Wired News two weeks ago, Robertson was charged in April 2001 with a felony count of "planning to cause serious bodily harm or death" after a teacher at his Moore, Oklahoma, high school discovered a short story that Robertson had written on a classroom computer. Titled "Evacuation Orders," the story described plans for an attack on the school that involved shooting a principal and blowing up the school.
Robertson, who plans to study journalism in college, called the writing a work of fiction. He said he found the first paragraph of the story on the school computer and simply began writing where the original writer had left off.
But despite a lack of evidence indicating the story was more than the product of his imagination, Robertson, then 18, was suspended from school for a year and arrested.
He and his family have spent the last year and a half fighting the felony charge with their defense attorney, Sara McFall, and lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union. Last December a judge dismissed the case, arguing that the Oklahoma statute used to prosecute Robertson was too vague and broad. But the prosecutor successfully appealed to reinstate it.
