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Hillsborough Circuit Judge William Levens underscored a tenet of democracy last week, ruling that free speech trumps the government's interest in damage control. The Hillsborough Sheriff's Office wanted the identities of people who criticized the agency's investigation in the Aisenberg missing-baby case. Levens ruled that the authors of those comments posted on the Internet have First Amendment rights that outweigh the sheriff's interest in outing them.
This rebuke should prompt the sheriff to halt a fishing expedition that calls the office's judgment into question. The sheriff sought to use subpoenas to the Web site, LeoAffairs.com, to identify critics who wrote anonymously to a law enforcement message board. Officials said they wanted to depose those who might have information about the case. A fuller explanation is that the office was trying to intimidate critics or distance itself now that the Aisenbergs have sued, claiming the Sheriff's Office violated their rights by focusing on the parents as suspects. By applying a constitutional test, Levens cut through the debate, putting free speech on a higher plane without prejudicing the civil case.
This is an unfortunate campaign - "is" because the sheriff plans to appeal and because every step only reminds the public how badly the office botched the probe. Five-month-old Sabrina disappeared from her home in 1997. Her parents were indicted in 1999, charged with making false statements to authorities. But federal prosecutors were forced to drop the charges in 2001 after a federal magistrate judge ruled that surveillance audio tapes were largely unintelligible and should be thrown out. Later reviews - by Sheriff's Office internal affairs and a special prosecutor appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush - exposed sloppiness and mistakes that rendered the case, as the prosecutor said, "doomed to failure." If the sheriff wants to know how the case went south, he doesn't need to trample on the Constitution to figure out who to summon into his office.