HAMMOND | Vikram Buddhi, charged with using Internet forums to call for the killing of President Bush, put his fate in the hands of an obscure New York stock analyst Wednesday.
Buddhi's attorneys are hoping that a scalding series of insults hurled at Bank of America analyst Jonathan Jacoby in an online forum in 2005 can help them prove the point that nasty communication is common on the Internet.
Prosecutors say Buddhi should be imprisoned for posting five messages in December 2005 and January 2006 calling for the assassinations and rapes of various American leaders and the bombings of American infrastructure.
Regardless of the context, the First Amendment should not allow Buddhi to threaten assassination and issue other threats, Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Benson said.
"It should be illegal speech," said Texan Hayward McMurray, a prosecution witness who first reported Buddhi's comments to the Secret Service. "I don't consider free speech as calling for the rape and murder of anyone."
Defense attorney John Martin has argued that the comments never were intended as true threats, but rather a part of a crude protest of the Iraq War.
McMurray said he had never seen anything so shocking in an online forum before.
But in a surprise move Wednesday, Martin said his legal team had just discovered other vicious messages on the same financial news forum, posted minutes after the Dec. 13, 2005, message that led McMurray to complain.
The messages called for Jacoby to be mugged and murdered because he downgraded his rating of a satellite radio stock. The message writers said Jacoby's family should be murdered in front of him and that he should be raped by a gang of men.
After trying unsuccessfully to convince U.S. District Judge James Moody not to admit the new evidence, Benson said the messages were irrelevant. And because of the late notice, the government had not had time to investigate whether the people who wrote the messages had been prosecuted.
Buddhi is an Indian national who has lived legally in Indiana for more than a decade while attending advanced math and physics classes at Purdue University in West Lafayette. He was charged with 11 crimes for posting the five messages.
Secret Service Special Agent Wade Gault has said the Buddhi case is significant because it could set a new legal precedent for what constitutes illegal speech on the Internet.
Closing arguments are scheduled this morning.
