Angel Dillard, who is facing federal charges for sending a threatening letter to an abortion doctor in Kansas, is making the predictable and amusing claim that her terroristic threats were inspired by God himself and therefore protected by the First Amendment.
A Kansas abortion opponent accused of sending a threatening letter to a Wichita doctor claims in court documents that her message was “divinely inspired” and protected by the freedoms of speech and religion.
Angel Dillard’s latest assertion was included in a flurry of recent defense filings in federal court. The Valley Center woman is being sued by the U.S. Justice Department under a law aimed at protecting access to abortion services.
The government’s lawsuit claims Dillard, of Valley Center, threatened Dr. Mila Means when she wrote her a letter last year saying that thousands of people from across the United States were looking into the doctor’s background.
“They will know your habits and routines. They know where you shop, who your friends are, what you drive, where you live,” the letter said. “You will be checking under your car everyday — because maybe today is the day someone places an explosive under it.”…
Dillard responded with a lawsuit saying the government’s suit violates her freedom of speech and religion. Government lawyers have criticized her arguments and asked the court to dismiss her counterclaim. Her attorney asked the court Friday allow her to amend her lawsuit to address “any pleading defects” and support its allegations.
“Angel Dillard believed she was inspired by God to send a letter to Dr. Means in an attempt to convince her not to pursue her plan to abort babies in Wichita,” attorney Donald McKinney said. “Angel Dillard wrote the letter quickly, in a matter of minutes, and believed that her message was divinely inspired.”
Dillard also claims the government’s lawsuit and related publicity caused tension among her religious associates, resulting in her losing ministry positions at her church and a local jail. She says officials at the Sedgwick County Detention Center revoked her jail ministry privileges as a result of the lawsuit and the related government investigation of her activities at the jail.
She suffered consequences for threatening to blow someone up? Imagine that. Her countersuit will be dismissed with extreme prejudice.
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d cwilson
June 8, 2012 at 11:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And David Berkowitz allegedly believed that his dog told him to shoot people in their cars. Her claim of divine inspiration should have as much weight in her guilt or innocence as Berkowitz’s claim of canine inspiration.
Moggie
June 8, 2012 at 11:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bring God in for questioning.
steve oberski
June 8, 2012 at 11:17 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Moggie
I’d settle for bringing Ratzinger into the ICC in Hague for questioning.
raven
June 8, 2012 at 11:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They do this a lot, threaten to kill people and say god told them to. Robert Beal is Vox Day’s father and is doing a long prison sentence.
raven
June 8, 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is BTW, not potential terrorism but terrorism.
Death threats are felonies and a lot of people are doing prison time for them these days. After Jared Loughner shot up a congressperson and 17 other people, the FBI has gotten a lot more proactive about them.
It’s also routine, expected. For 2,000 years the xians have been drenching the world in blood in the name of their god. Tens of millions killed at least.
Scott Roeder, George Tiller’s murderer, used a similar defense about following god’s will. He’s doing life in prison.
It’s been worse in the past. The Catholics killed 1 million Albingensian heretics in a highly successful genocide. They got every single one of them.
erichoug
June 8, 2012 at 11:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This one leaves me a little bit conflicted to be honest.
On the one hand, I find the woman who is doing the threatening to be absolutely abhorent and would personally like to run her through the threshing machine.
But, I also think of myself as a free speech extremist who doesn’t even believe that threatening the president should be illegal. I do believe in time and place restrictions because you simply could not have a civil society.
But I don’t know if I am really willing to say that words are crimes, even threatening words. And yes, I know that is bad and that the woman in this case probably deserves to have the book thrown at her but where do you draw the line? I do think that listing actual details puts this of possible assaults definitely puts this in to a new realm. But, the woman in question hasn’t committed any crime so how far do we go in gauranteeing the absolute right to free speech? Who gets to decide what we all an say and what we can’t. Who would I trust to regulate my own speech and where would I draw the line for myself an other people.
So, yeah, like I said, conflicted.
erichoug
June 8, 2012 at 11:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sorry, I promise to proof read my posts in the future before hitting submit.
christophburschka
June 8, 2012 at 12:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Lock her the hell up. It’s good to catch one of these monsters before they can murder, unlike what happened with Roeder.
doktorzoom
June 8, 2012 at 12:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be fair, when a burly man says, “Nice little store you got here. It would be a shame if it burned to the ground,” it’s really possible that he only wants to inform you of some exciting new fire safety tips.
frog
June 8, 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
erichoug:
Here’s a thought-experiment. Suppose a man comes up to you (in person) and says, “I really hate you and I’m going to put a bullet in your head.” Imagine he is very large and his demeanor seems somewhat unhinged.
He doesn’t have a gun in his hand. He’s just standing there and he says this.
Is he threatening you? He’s just talking. Is he making you feel scared? (Please perform the thought-experiment honestly.) Is that an acceptable behavior to permit in a civilized society?
Imagine he does it several times. He shows up at your job and says this. He finds you in the grocery store and says this. You’re on the city bus and who should board but that guy, and he sits down next to you and says this to you.
Sometimes he shows up with friends. They surround you and say, “We’re going to kill you.” They sound very, very serious and not-kidding-around.
At what point is it not free speech, as far as you’re concerned?
——
People make jokes about things, sometimes including mock death threats. Usually they do this with people they know, or they do it once and that’s the end of it, or they do it in a tone or manner that most socially ept people recognize as a joke.
But there’s a point where reasonable people can say, “You know, I don’t think this person is kidding around. I think there’s a strong likelihood they’re going to act on these thoughts.”
And at that point, the reasonable person will be frightened. And that fear? That’s the whole fucking point of the big scary guy and his threats. And in most civilized cultures, we have agreed that deliberately instilling fear in another person is an assault against that person, and treat it as a crime.
This isn’t a free speech issue. “I hate [person] and she should not perform abortions, and abortion is bad and blah blah blah…” is protected free speech. “[Person] should die for [reasons]” is borderline, and for me would strongly depend on context (is there an implied exhortation to people who the speaker should reasonably believe will take this opinion as a directive?).
But “People are organizing to harm you in the following very specific ways” is clear and obvious and so far over the line that your internal conflict suggests to me you need to do some very hard self-examination of why you think what you think.
Dillard didn’t say, “I think you should die” or even “Gah, I would like to kill you.” She made very specific, detailed threats, which suggest a level of contemplation well beyond the “blowing off steam” zone.
About the only defense I would offer for her actions is that she’s mentally disturbed and should be medicated and in counseling. Almost by definition, sane people do not claim that god has told them to commit murder.
iknklast
June 8, 2012 at 1:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
erichoug – are you suggesting that we wait until someone dies before considering it a crime? I’m a free-speech extremist, too, in that I feel allowing Fred Phelps to do his nasty business of picketing is legal and protected. I think when you get into credible threats, you’ve entered a zone where you are, as the Supreme Court put it, shouting fire in a crowded theatre.
Once the doctor is lying in a bloody puddle on the ground, it would be easy to say a crime is committed. Free speech would have been protected. The operation was a success, but the doctor is dead. Bad system.
lofgren
June 8, 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The idea that words are crimes is indeed troubling. It can get even grayer if their seems to be a clear, but not provable, intent to imply that somebody should be killed rather than stating it outright. For example by saying that all black men intend to rape white women (ergo leading the audience to conclude that it would be justifiable defense of yourself or another to kill black men on sight). However there is a point where speech becomes terroristic threats, an attempt to silence rather than engage in discussion. If ideas are products in a marketplace, threats are the equivalent of burning down the competitor’s warehouse the night before market day.
It’s not that there are some things you can’t say. It’s that there are some things you can’t do. And threatening to kill people is one of them. It doesn’t matter how you phrase it.
erichoug
June 8, 2012 at 1:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Frog-
I understand what you are saying and I did run through the thought experiment. I have had people threaten me before in the totally serious, not screwing around sort of way that you mention. When I was a Bike messenger I had more than a few wackaloons who were not happy with me. One apparently followed me home so he knew where I lived but never went past letting me know that he knew where I lived. I understand that the world can be a scary place. But do you let fear become an excuse to curtail freedom?-
You and I both appear to be fairly reasonable people and we both understand what constitutes a reasonable statement and a statement with a reasonable probability of being a threat. But, we aren’t neccesarily what is at issue.-
What if someone says, “I find Athesist terrifying, They are trying to murder all Christins,.” Does that fear trump my freedom from religion?-
What about the threat of terrorism? We live in an age where all the government has to do is say the word ‘terorism’ and they can overrule any law or freedom we have. They can label someone a terrosrist and they immediately justify any action against that person however heinous or un-just.-
The real issue is that freedom is messy. In return for being able to speak my mind, I have to allow people to speak theirs. There are LOTS of people out there that hold views I disagree with.-
But again, the question I asked and no-one answered is who gets to decide? Is it me? you? the government, the Southern Baptist Convention? The Pope? Who gets to decide what speech is a crime and what speech isn’t?-
So, here’s my thought experiment. Think of the current political climate and think if the differnet people running for state and local office got to police your speech, would you be OK with that?-
Oh, and as far as the guys on the bus, that’s what the CHL is for.-
erichoug
June 8, 2012 at 2:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@iknklast
I would invite you to try my thought experiment above. Whom would you trust to police your own speech? Would you state governor and legislature be an acceptable gate keeper on your speech? What about the next president?
Once you allow somone to regulate what you can and cannot say then you no longer have freedom of speech. Your intention to legislate speech is good in this case, but what about in the next case? What happens when someone uses your precedent to limit speech that you have less of a problem with? What about when someone limits your freedom to say negative things about a politician or a religious organization? You open the door with good intentions and then all the bastards come in behind you.
Taz
June 8, 2012 at 3:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
erichoug –
And trying to force someone to act against their will by threats of violence, isn’t that curtailing freedom?
I don’t find your atheist example very credible. Saying “atheists want to murder all Christians” isn’t going to get an atheist arrested for threatening violence any more than saying “atheists rob banks” is going to get one arrested for robbery.
Didaktylos
June 8, 2012 at 3:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think it becomes criminal when a specific individual is identified as the object of the speech; i.e. “People of classification x should be killed” – protected free speech, “Person Y should be killed because they are of classification x” – criminally culpable threat.
Doug Little
June 8, 2012 at 3:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ erichoug,
I think the difference in this case is that the threat is ever present. It’s not an immediate threat of violence that disappears once the contact with the person is over. By suggesting that we know where you live and “You will be checking under your car everyday — because maybe today is the day someone places an explosive under it” means that the threat never ends.
leni
June 8, 2012 at 5:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Taz:
That’s exactly what I was going to say. Death threats are a much bigger threat to free speech and free expression than, um, punishing death threats is.
Just as the government should not be able to threaten it’s citizens with death for exercising their freedom of expression, neither should citizens. There is certainly a difference, but threats can have pretty much the same chilling effect. And it has. The anti-abortion terrorists have succeeded in preventing doctors from practicing as the law allows and patients from accessing health care.
If you think their right to do this supersedes everyone else’s rights to privacy, equal access (and perhaps expression), then I suggest you rethink your priorities.
leni
June 8, 2012 at 5:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Someday I too shall learn to proofread. Probably not anytime soon though.
Ichthyic
June 8, 2012 at 8:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But, I also think of myself as a free speech extremist who doesn’t even believe that threatening the president should be illegal.
so you don’t support the constitution then.
because the first amendment specifically disallows intimidation as free speech.
Ichthyic
June 8, 2012 at 8:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
…be as extreme as you want.
don’t expect you won’t be thought of as extremely silly.
Nemo
June 9, 2012 at 3:12 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Don’t worry Angel, I have the feeling you’ll be visiting jail again very soon.