Nevada Attempts to Breach Free Speech

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” President Thomas Jefferson wrote in a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, the son-in-law of John Adams.

Had the third U.S. President been a Nevada citizen and written this now famous and oft-quoted sentence on Facebook in 2020, he would be facing possible criminal misdemeanor charges.

That’s what Clark County resident Steve Feeder, 60, is looking at after having called Gov. Steve Sisolak a ‘tyrant,’ in a May 19 Facebook post, stating, “In any WAR which we are now in sheep will be casualties but we must March on.”

He was speaking of Sisolak’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

Feeders comment, and 30-plus others like them are now considered, “inciting breach of peace,” by Las Vegas Township Judge Karen Bennett-Haron, who ruled in October that his postings meet the “minimal evidentiary standard” for a crime.

But then Vegas is no stranger to judges that venture off the Constitutional rail. Federal Judge Gloria Navarro decided to do everything she could to help the Bureau of Land Management, et. al., in its then-Senator Harry Reid’s illegal 2014 land snatch from the Bundy Ranch and the ensuing armed standoff, including violating the oath of her office as well as the defendant’s civil liberties..

The Nevada Attorney’s General office said that usually decline to bring charges on social media only related threats directed at public officials due to the First Amendment, but that Feeder’s comments were specific enough to warrant criminal charges.

“If you count all the threats, there’s 34 of the exact same threats pasted on Governor Sisolak’s page, which is open to the public for any crazy person to read it and act on it regardless of whether the defendant intended for somebody to act on it,” Deputy Attorney General Michael Kovac said. “The fact that he’s posting that to Governor Sisolak’s page shows a subjective intent to terrorize the governor. There’s no other reason for him to post it there.”

Feeder was offered a plea deal which would have entailed a guilty plea to a single misdemeanor, a promise to stay out of trouble for six months, a $1,000 fine and a 120-day suspended sentence. Feeder refused and pleaded not guilty to all charges.

A jury trial is set for June 2021.

Jay Maynard, Feeder’s attorney, noted that state prosecutors presented no evidence that Feeder had purchased a gun, planned a trip to Carson City, attempted to directly contact Sisolak or had done anything beyond posting comments.

“He was upset. Absolutely. He used some very pointed language. Absolutely. But he was protesting the fact that we had been in a quarantine for, as he put it at the time, 60 days, and that is well within his First Amendment right,” Maynard said. “Indeed, to be able to complain to our government is the most essential of the First Amendment rights. Political speech is protected beyond any other form of speech. It is sacrosanct and it is absolutely essential to the proper functioning of our democracy.”

Initially, Feeder was charged with three crimes, including: Interfering with a public officer, a gross misdemeanor; publishing matter inciting breach of peace or other crimes, also a gross misdemeanor; and provoking commission of breach of peace, a misdemeanor. Bennett-Haron decided that prosecutors had met the necessary standard on “publishing matter inciting breach of peace.”

Nevada Department of Public Safety Investigator Colter Earl testified that he began looking into the case after receiving a complaint from the state’s Dignitary Protection Detail (DPD) regarding “threats” made against Sisolak by Feeder on his Facebook page.

Earl said that he spoke with Feeder in May 2020 at Feeder’s home, where he admitted to posting the comments on Sisolak’s Facebook page.

“His response was that his wife called him an idiot and that when I had showed up at his house that I was there for his rant,” Earl said, according to a court transcript. “He described himself basically as very angry and upset regarding the State’s action in the COVID-19 response.”

Earl stated that his division doesn’t have a “rule book” determining when it was appropriate to investigate or bring charges related to social media threats. He did say that it was the DPD that pointed to other comments left by Feeder, including calls for “civil disobedience,” telling the governor that “your [sic] the CANCER and your slow painful passing will be the cure” and saying that a family friend had prayed for “death to the tyrant and his family.”

While acknowledging that Feeder hadn’t taken any direct action beyond the Facebook posts, Kovac wrote in a court filing that making the threats in a “popular, public online forum amplifies the fear that Defendant (Feeder) might find a receptive audience of like-minded individuals willing to carry out such threats.”

Kovac cited the arrest of three alleged members of the “Boogaloo” extremist movement and the resignation of the state’s former Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation Director Heather Korbulic over threats made to her safety after less than two months on the job.

Korbulic was not physically attacked or harmed by anyone, extremist or otherwise, during her brief tenure.

“It is an environment on edge, filled with angry, impulsive, and dangerous nutcases, many of whom are armed and appear ready to take action,” Kovac claimed. “It takes only one of these nutcases to be moved by one of these exhortations and decide to cross the oftentimes fine line separating vitriol from violence.”

Maynard said that the First Amendment is the benchmark in this case.

“Crazy people aren’t the standard,” Maynard said. “The speaker has to know that his audience is receptive to an immediate calling. We don’t see that anywhere.”

As Jefferson wrote, also in that same letter to Smith: “The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves.”

It becomes easy to see the state administration (British ministry,) the media (gazetteers,) the state and federal judges (ministers,) and ourselves wrapped up in this much overlooked potion of Jefferson’s commentary.

Jefferson also hoped it wouldn’t take 20 years.