State appeals court: First Amendment doesn't protect boy's essay

The Associated Press

12.15.99

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WAUSAU, Wis. — An essay in which an eighth-grade boy wrote about an upset student beheading a teacher is not protected by the First Amendment, a state appeals court ruled yesterday.

Wisconsin's 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the 13-year-old Oconto boy's four-paragraph story, filled with misspelled words and a reference to the teacher's classroom nickname of Mrs. C., was a real threat not protected by the First Amendment.

"The right to free speech is not absolute," Judge Michael Hoover wrote for the three-judge court. "For example, speech may be punished if it presents a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above inconvenience, annoyance or unrest."

The ruling upheld Oconto County Circuit Judge Richard Delforge's decision to find the boy delinquent for disorderly conduct after the teacher who gave the assignment took the writing to an associate principal at her school.

"There is absolutely no social value achieved by the juvenile's conduct in completing an assignment allegedly that makes a direct threat to his teacher," Delforge wrote. "This is not the type of action that we're going to allow in our community. It is not the type of action that we're going to allow in our classroom."

The boy was placed on a year's supervision and, among other things, ordered to apologize to the English teacher for the Oct. 7, 1998, incident.

According to court records, the English teacher assigned each member of her class to start a story entitled "Top Secret." The writing would then be passed to other students to finish.

Instead of doing the work, the 13-year-old boy visited with friends and disrupted the class, causing the teacher to send him to a hallway to start his story.

When the class ended, the boy turned in this story:

"There one lived an old ugly woman her name was Mrs. C. that stood for crab. She was a mean old woman that would beat children sencless. I guess that's why she became a teacher.

"Well one day she kick a student out of her class & he din't like it. That student was naned Dick.

"The next morning Dick came to class & and in his coat he counseled a machedy. When the teacher told him to shut up he whiped it out & cut her head off.

"When the sub came 2 days later, she needed a paperclipp so she opened the droor. Ah she screamed as she found Mrs. C's head in the droor."

After the teacher took the story to the associate principal, the boy was called to the office and he told authorities he "didn't mean any harm" by what he wrote and didn't mean for it to be a threat to the teacher, court records said.

The boy was placed in secure detention that day, court record said.

When the boy was sentenced last March, the judge was told the boy and his mother had fled from an abusive father and had lived in five states, often in homeless shelters, before moving to Wisconsin in 1997, court records said.

The boy's attorney, Assistant State Public Defender Eileen Hirsch, said she was disappointed in yesterday's decision but declined further comment until she had read the ruling.