Update II: Via the CT:
he Medina city prosecutor has filed a motion seeking dismissal of a criminal charge against a Columbia Station man who posted a Facebook message cheering on the Newtown, Conn., school gunman.
Hearing scheduled for January 25.
***
Update: The ACLU has now stepped into the corner of Joseph Resovsky, the 20-year-old suburban Cleveland man who was charged with inducing panic after posting a Facebook message celebrating the Newtown school shootings.
Joseph W. Resovsky, 20, was scheduled for an arraignment today in Medina Municipal Court on a charge of inducing panic. But the hearing was canceled after James Hardiman, the Ohio ACLU legal director, entered a written plea of not guilty on Resovsky’s behalf.
“We believe the defendant’s statements are protected speech under the First Amendment,” Hardiman said in a prepared statement, released Wednesday.
***
20-year-old Joseph Resovsky claims he was tired of all the Facebook posts expressing sympathy and outrage after the devastating school shootings in Newtown. That’s why he took to his own Facebook page and posted the following on Friday:
“I’m so happy someone shot up all those little (expletives). Viva la school shootings!!!!”
Besides being moronic, insensitive, callous, and in the poorest of poor, poor taste, the Facebook posting was also taken as a threat by some of those who saw it, perhaps because Resovksy also listed Adam Lanza, the shooter, as his idol. Medina police came calling on a warrant for inducing panic after being notified.
Berarducci said the posting “was taken as a threat by many people.”
Resovsky told police that he hadn’t meant to offend anyone, saying he just was tired of seeing all the comments on Facebook about the shooting. He said he wanted to see how many people would comment on his posting.
Berarducci said a caller reported the Facebook posting to police, and others mentioned it on the Medina Police Department’s Facebook page.
“There were quite a few posts where people were pretty upset by it,” he said. “I think it scared a lot of people.
“A lot of people took it as an endorsement to commit other acts of violence in the schools.”
Resovsky, who works in Medina, was arrested on a warrant Saturday.
He was released on bond, and probably immediately deactivated his Facebook account.
This article appears in Jan 16-22, 2013.
That guy is the true embodiment of an asshole. Well put.
It’s expensive to be mean and stupid…
Whatever happened to free speech in this country…. This is still America….
Yes, you can have free speech, but it’s just like yelling “Fire” in the middle of a huge group of people and then watching people die while they get trampled in the ensuing panic. Don’t be an asshole.
he wont be convicted of anything. yes he is a ass clown for posting this, but its not inducing panic like yelling “fire” would be. the neo nazis love hitler and say they hate jews and gays all the time, have protests its all over their facebook pages yet no one is arresting them. just saying…
AdamHill you are way off base here. This is NOT like yelling fire in the theature. This is my yelling, “I’m glad it burned down!” Huge difference here.
Last time I checked, this is America. i have a god-given right to be as offensive and tasteless as I want to.
@molly… Sad but true…It is part of our quickly eroding personal freedoms…
I have to wonder if the Medina Po Po are at Chad Lambert’s door for his not so veiled threat against Molly?
Interesting interactions on this test. Molly really got some people’s dander up but not as much as Resovsky. I liked GreasedMonkey’s post on the 7th. What is a threat and what is freedom of speech on the new social media? When someone says something so distasteful that some have an urge to kill them, who is more at fault? I hate nearly everything joe12750 says, yet I have no interest in harming him other than psycologically and egotistically and by exposing him and the far right who claim to be such hard working and rugged individuallists as the lazy and pushy pricks they really are! LOL
Molly, yes, you do have the right to be as offensive and tasteless as you want. That fact, however, doesn’t make you any less of an asshole though if you are tasteless and offensive to other people.
Also, Molly, I don’t feel I’m off base. Yelling fire in a theater is an asshole move, as is writing a post that states you’re glad a bunch of children got murdered. Both require you to be a pretty big asshole that experiences joy as a direct result of people being killed. Simply stating you’re glad a movie theater burned down isn’t that much of an asshole move, maybe it was a front for drugs or gangs and now the world is a better place. Saying something like, “I’m glad the theater burned down and killed those 50 children” would, however, be a sufficiently asshole statement. Oh, and my name is AdamHall, not AdamHill. You were close though.
I liked the way you handled that AdamHall.
with freedoms come responsibility
I hope molly and chad get married; they are both dumb as shit so they would be perfect for each other
Yes, his speech is protected under the First Amendment. But at this day in age we need to have some sensitivity as to what we post online. Facebook is a private company, so if they decided to ban this man from their site, it is perfectly legal to do so and does not violate his First Amendment rights. Clearly, his “innocent” post was not taken lightly by the the other people on Facebook because numerous people reported his post to the authorities. Technically, he can say whatever he wants, but in this case he shouldn’t. Praising and idolizing a mass murderer is far beyond expressing your opinion. Anyone who makes accusations such as these should face some time of punishment, especially if they did it as a joke or thought it was an innocent status.