McAlester district attorney ordered police inquiry into online comments about him

McALESTER — District Attorney Jim Miller was so outraged by what people wrote about him on a local message board that he filed a police complaint.

The ensuing investigation and subpoena targeting 35 anonymous posters have caused a firestorm stretching far beyond McAlester's city limits.

A journalism professor and First Amendment advocate calls Miller's actions "the kind of thing you'd expect in a police state.”

Miller counters that free speech has restrictions. The allegations written about him on a site called the McAlester Watercooler (mccooler.net) are so offensive that he is the victim of a crime, Miller claims.

"I'm alleging that a person or persons have slandered me by accusing me of various things, but mostly that I'm a drug dealer, that I have killed an entire family in a car wreck while high on drugs and that I take bribes and pay bribes,” Miller said Thursday.

"I defy anybody, anywhere, to say that is protected by the First Amendment,” Miller said.

Who authorized the subpoena?

Miller said he provided police with comment threads on the site about him from 10 dates since October 2007.

That prompted two McAlester police detectives to show up at McCooler administrator Harold King's door Tuesday. They delivered a subpoena requiring King to produce identifying information about 35 people who posted under pseudonyms on the site.

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