McAlester district attorney ordered police inquiry into online comments about him

By Tony Thornton

Published: August 15, 2008

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.

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.

King filed a formal objection Thursday, saying he won't comply because the subpoena doesn't indicate on whose authority it was issued.

A legal expert told The Oklahoman that only a judge or a prosecutor can authorize such a subpoena. Miller said he didn't authorize it; he simply filed a police complaint "like any other citizen.”

Whether Miller formally authorized the subpoena or not, it "smacks of intimidation,” said Joey Senat, past president of Freedom of Information Oklahoma and an associate professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University.

"It's anti-democratic. In other words, our government officials should expect to be criticized. ... To threaten someone with any sort of crime for doing that is nothing short of unacceptable,” Senat said.

He said if Miller thinks he has been libeled on the Web site, he should file a civil lawsuit.

Oklahoma is among 16 states with criminal libel laws still on the books, according to the Student Press Law Center. Most recently, Utah abolished its law in 2007.

Oklahoma's libel law was last changed by legislators in 1895, according to a textbook by Senat, "Mass Communication Law in Oklahoma.” The law prohibits false written speech that exposes someone to hatred, contempt or ridicule.

Former state Sen. Gene Stipe, a frequent target of King's Web site, filed a criminal libel complaint against King in 2005. Miller's predecessor declined to file charges.

At that time, an official with the state agency that represents district attorneys said he'd never heard of a criminal libel report being filed with police, much less filed as a charge by a prosecutor.

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