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From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Gone with the wind.
Message-ID: <621@spar.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 26-Oct-85 20:04:25 EST
Article-I.D.: spar.621
Posted: Sat Oct 26 20:04:25 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 21:02:52 EST
References: <863@lsuc.UUCP> <7800597@inmet.UUCP>
Organization: The Institute of Impure Science
Lines: 21

> Dave Sherman and Don Black have been going at it over the issue of a
> law in Canada that recently allowed the conviction of a publisher
> of hate literature, apparently because the publisher knew himself to 
> be making false statements.
> 
> Don Black points out that a law that makes "false" statements illegal
> creates (in effect) a state version of truth, and questions whether it
> is wise to convict people on this basis.
> 
> Dave Sherman points out that a Jury had to be unanimous in the conviction,
> and that they had been instructed not to convict if they had a reasonable
> doubt, and that since conviction occurred, it was the Jury's unanimous
> notion of truth which prevailed, not that of the state.
> 
> Have I got it straight?

Close, but not quite.  According to Dave, the jury found the accused
guilty of maliciously publishing statements that were contrary, not
to the state's "truth", nor to the jury's "truth", but to the knowledge
of the defendant himself.
						Baba