Canton Coverup Part 458: Representative Nicholas Boldyga Announces Upcoming Legislation To Repeal Massachusetts Witness Intimidation Statute

 

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On Tuesday morning Attorney Timothy Bradl, Attorney Mark Bederow, and I had a meeting with State Representative Nicholas Boldyga (R-Southwick) to discuss repealing and rewriting the Massachusetts witness intimidation statute. His office got in touch with me after I was arrested last year and although we had initial discussions about the repealing the law, nothing came from it. However, with the failed attempt by police to charge the Canton 9, the Bukkake Bunch, and Rich Schiffer with witness intimidation for messaging certain McAlberts or dropping rubber duckies with opinions written on them, it became more obvious that something needed to be done. The police should not be going around charging innocent people (with no criminal records) with felonies for the crime of exercising their First Amendment rights. Last night Boldya was on the Young Jurks, which I joined later on, to discuss his plan.

Legislation will be written and submitted in January. From there a public hearing will be held, at which people who have been targeted by the police using this statute could be called to testify. When that happens we will be organizing and initiating a campaign to contact state reps and senators urging them to pass the bill. There are 160 state reps and 40 state senators, and most of them probably are not educated as to why this bill is problematic. But the beauty of democracy is that they work for us, and it’s our job to educated them and let them know why this law needs to change.

This is an issue that should unite Republicans and Democrats. Although well intentioned, this law can and will be used to criminalize constitutionally protected speech, which will create a chilling effect that prevents people from speaking. Liberals believe in criminal justice reform and an end to mass incarceration. This law makes it so that people can spend decades in prison for protesting the government, the police, and murderers. Everyone should be against it, even if you don’t like me personally. We should not be giving the government and the police the power to do this to anyone, because they won’t stop with me. And if you’re cheering this on now because you don’t like me, ask yourself what will happen if people who don’t like you start getting elected and control the police.

Here is the statute as it is now:

Whoever willfully, either directly or indirectly: (i) threatens, attempts or causes physical, emotional or economic injury or property damage to; (ii) conveys a gift, offer or promise of anything of value to; or (iii) misleads, intimidates or harasses another person who is a: (A) witness or potential witness; (B) person who is or was aware of information, records, documents or objects that relate to a violation of a criminal law or a violation of conditions of probation, parole, bail or other court order; (C) judge, juror, grand juror, attorney, victim witness advocate, police officer, correction officer, federal agent, investigator, clerk, court officer, court reporter, court interpreter, probation officer or parole officer; (D) person who is or was attending or a person who had made known an intention to attend a proceeding described in this section; or (E) family member of a person described in this section, with the intent to or with reckless disregard for the fact that it may; (1) impede, obstruct, delay, prevent or otherwise interfere with: a criminal investigation at any stage, a grand jury proceeding, a dangerousness hearing, a motion hearing, a trial or other criminal proceeding of any type or a parole hearing, parole violation proceeding or probation violation proceeding; or an administrative hearing or a probate or family court proceeding, juvenile proceeding, housing proceeding, land proceeding, clerk’s hearing, court-ordered mediation or any other civil proceeding of any type; or (2) punish, harm or otherwise retaliate against any such person described in this section for such person or such person’s family member’s participation in any of the proceedings described in this section, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 10 years or by imprisonment in the house of correction for not more than 21/2 years or by a fine of not less than $1,000 or more than $5,000 or by both such fine and imprisonment. If the proceeding in which the misconduct is directed at is the investigation or prosecution of a crime punishable by life imprisonment or the parole of a person convicted of a crime punishable by life imprisonment, such person shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 20 years or by imprisonment in the house of corrections for not more than 21/2 years or by a fine of not more than $10,000 or by both such fine and imprisonment. 

Here are some of the many unconstitutional issues with the statute:

• Emotional harm is undefined. As it stands now being made to feel sad by someone else’s speech would constitute emotional harm.
• You shouldn’t go to jail for 10 years, or have your First Amendment rights limited in any way, just because your speech allegedly causes emotional harm to someone who has been labeled as a witness.
• Emotional harm is subjective and there is no way to measure it. How do we know someone is experiencing the emotions they say they are? How do we know Chris Albert is sad? How do we know Jennifer McCabe is embarrassed? Why are their irrational fears more important than your right to speak freely?
• Making it illegal to cause economic injury to a witness means you can’t boycott a witness’ business, give them bad Google reviews, or other constitutionally protected acts of free speech.
• “Misleading” someone labeled as a witness should not be illegal. This would give the government the power to put you in jail if you post something on social media that turns out not to be true. It’s not against the law to be stupid.
• What one person considers to be misleading, another person could consider factual. If I posted that Jennifer McCabe Googled “hos long to die in cold” at 2:27 AM, the police shouldn’t be able to arrest me because they call that misleading.
• Impeding and obstructing justice are not defined, and can be left up to the police to determine.
• As it stands now, the witness gets to decide what the goal of your speech is. If they tell police that they believe that the goal of your speech is to prevent a witness from testifying, then you can be arrested for felony witness intimidation, even if that was not your goal. Your reasons don’t matter as much as what they believe your reasons are.
• The statute makes almost everyone a witness. Who defines what a “potential witness is?”
• The statute includes special protections for a “person who is or was aware of information, records, documents or objects that relate to a violation of a criminal law or a violation of conditions of probation, parole, bail or other court order.” That means anyone following a murder trial closely is a protected witness.
• That statute includes judges as witnesses. If you criticize a judge, post something misleading about them, write something that causes them to lose their job, or makes them sad, you could be arrested for witness intimidation.
• The statute includes police officers, which means you can be charged with felony witness intimidation for making a cop sad. I am currently being charged with doing this to 2 cops. If the cops wanted to they could’ve arrested every single person who participated in a BLM protest.
• The statute includes “family members of witnesses” as witnesses. But what is a family member? A cousin? Second cousin? Ex wife? Stepmom? With big families like the McAlberts it basically means you can’t make anyone in the entire town of Canton sad.
• The statute also covers any “person who is or was attending or a person who had made known an intention to attend a proceeding.” So anyone who has attended a Karen Read hearing is a witness. As a matter of fact, it makes anyone who has attended ANY court proceeding on any matter a witness. Almost anyone who has ever dealt with probate court has experienced emotional harm because it deals with issues like child support and custody.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a need for witness intimidation statutes. We don’t want to live in a society where witnesses are put in legitimate fear for their physical safety if they testify in court. We can’t have gangsters threatening to break people’s legs if they tell the truth because bad guys would never get convicted. But this is not what the statute does in Massachusetts. We should model it after the 49 other states, none of which have a law that mentions anything about emotional or economic harm to the vast array of people who are considered witnesses. I published an article last March that included witness intimidation statutes from more than 30 other states. All of them are short, concise laws, that make it illegal to threaten a witness with physical harm if they are about to testify in a court proceeding.

The witness intimidation statute in Massachusetts creates two classes of citizens – those labeled as witnesses and those who aren’t. If you fit the vast criteria of being labeled as a witness then the First Amendment rights of others no longer exist in your orbit.  If you are not labeled as a witness then people are free to make you sad, cause you economic harm, or mislead you.

Witness intimidation should not be a charge in and of itself – it should supplement other charges. For instance, it is already illegal to threaten to kill someone. If the person being threatened is also a witness, and the goal of the speaker is to prevent that witness from testifying, then the police should add on an extra charge of witness intimidation. But in Norfolk County the police are treating witness intimidation as the primary crime.

Representative Boldyga said in our meeting that a court official told him that the law isn’t problematic because no police department would ever weaponize it by arresting people who make “witnesses” sad. And for years they were right. But the law has been there waiting for a police department that is corrupt and shameless enough to exploit it that way. For months the State Police Detective Unit for the Norfolk County DA’s Office was looking for a way to stop me from criticizing them. They read the statute the way it was written and realized they could weaponize it to have me arrested. The goal of this was to create a chilling effect for others, because people would be less likely to protest and criticize the McAlberts and the State Police if they thought they could go to jail for it.

The State Police didn’t stop with me though. They tried to charge the Canton 9 with felonies for peacefully holding protest signs on a public sidewalk because it was within eyesight of Chris Albert. This included a 17 year old, who will likely now be scared to participate in peaceful protests – one of the most important ways to exercise your rights in a democracy – because he doesn’t want to go to jail.

They tried it with Rich Schiffer, because rubber duckies with “Colin did it” written on the bottom made Chris and Colin Albert sad.

Bukkake spent months doing his best KGB impression by driving all across the state and demanding to know why people messages Jennifer McCabe 15 months ago, or dropped a rubber ducky on a sidewalk. This isn’t satire, it happened in real life:

 

I became the guinea pig when they arrested me last October. After the State Police realized they could weaponize this law to censor speech, they weren’t going to be content with doing it just to me. But they went too far with it, and it caught the eye of a legislator who wants to fix the problem. We’re going to get this law repealed and we’re going to make history.