Seized Property, Shredded Rights, and a First Amendment Nightmare
By Richard Luthmann with Michael Volpe
Blogger’s “Hateful Eight” Posts Spur Criminal Case
Paul Boyne’s free-speech fight began with eight angry blog posts. The 70-year-old Virginia father, Annapolis graduate, former Department of War contractor, and family court victim, is a former editor of the Family Court Circus blog. His journalism blasted Connecticut judges in vulgar, even violent terms.
His commentary publicly ridiculed family court officials with epithets and anti-Semitic slurs, at one point fantasizing about putting “a .50 caliber bullet” in a judge’s head. It was modeled on a case involving Walter Bagdasarian, who made threatening posts about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama on a message board.
Bagdasarian suggested Obama would be harmed with a .50 caliber rifle. His conviction for these threats was later overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals due to insufficient evidence that a reasonable person would interpret his statements as serious threats.
Nonetheless, Connecticut authorities struck back at Boyne’s “good-faith commentary.” He now faces 18 felony counts of first-degree stalking over this and other posts.
His alleged crime? Purely words on a website. The Hateful Eight.
“They can’t even point to what part of the blog is supposed to be a threat,” Boyne said from jail. “There’s no dangling participle or run-on sentence that constitutes a crime.”
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned his conviction for these threats.
Three judges claimed they felt threatened, but no one was harmed. Critics say Connecticut is using a stalking law as a muzzle for an irritating gadfly.
Boyne’s case has become a constitutional flashpoint – a test of whether blistering, offensive criticism of public officials can land a citizen in prison in America. We know it’s already happening in the U.K. and mainland Europe.
As Boyne dryly put it, “the First Amendment doesn’t operate in the state of Connecticut” under this prosecution.
Stalking Law or Censorship Weapon?
The legal heart of the case is two Connecticut statutes (CGS § 53a-181c and 181f) being wielded in an unprecedented way. Boyne is charged with first-degree electronic stalking purely for blog posts – no direct contact, no following, just online screeds.
Such use of a stalking law against speech is drawing national attention. Illinois and D.C. courts have already struck down similar laws as unconstitutional. In People v. Relerford (Ill. 2017) and Mashaud v. Boone (D.C. 2021), high courts ruled that criminalizing distressing online speech goes too far.
Yet Connecticut presses on.
“The statute used is facially unconstitutional when applied to speech, a fact recognized in Relerford and Boone,” Boyne noted.
Connecticut’s indictment doesn’t even specify which words in Boyne’s posts are illegal – just that the posts exist.
“It’s a malicious prosecution,” Boyne said. “This is state power enforcing a private agenda.“
The blog entries – titled “Judge Grotesque,” “Jew Court,” and the like – drip with hate and hyperbole. But under First Amendment precedent, only “true threats” fall outside protection.
Boyne and his advocates argue that his diatribes, while ugly, never crossed that line. They compare it to a famous Vietnam protest case (Watts v. U.S.) where a man said “the first person I’m gonna shoot is LBJ” – speech the U.S. Supreme Court found protected.
If that over-the-top rhetoric was allowed, they ask, why not Boyne’s vitriol?
Connecticut’s answer could redraw the line between free speech and criminal stalking.
Boyne’s Connecticut Case Collapsing: Proper Motions Will Decimate Prosecution
As Boyne’s legal saga unfolds, he claims his case should already be over, and his own defense is hamstringing him. Court-appointed attorney Todd Bussert has, in Boyne’s view, barely fought back. Bussert filed only a single motion – arguing the charged statute is overbroad – while ignoring a dozen other motions Boyne had drafted attacking the prosecution on multiple fronts.
“My lawyers aren’t ready for trial. We don’t even know what the nature and cause of the accusations are. We have no particulars,” Boyne fumed, noting that Judge Peter Brown refuses to compel the State to detail what language was criminal with particularity.
Among the unfiled motions Boyne outlined: challenges to the vague arrest warrants (which cite no specific threats), demands to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, and allegations of outrageous government misconduct. Boyne even prepared motions charging that Connecticut violated its own shield law by treating his blog like contraband.
But his concerns fell on deaf ears.
“I was just trying to plead out…I understand the stalking charge is bullshit,” he told his lawyers in frustration.
Instead of filing Boyne’s motions or securing his release, prior attorneys put the case on pause by questioning his competence – a move Boyne calls a betrayal.
Bussert, now on the case, hasn’t pressed the more explosive claims either. Boyne suspects his lawyer was pressured not to rock the boat. He says Connecticut’s legal elites delivered a warning to Bussert – a behind-closed-doors message to play along in this “pretend justice” show.
The result, Boyne says, is a tepid defense in the face of a constitutional crisis.
“You’d think any competent attorney would be jumping up and down at what’s happening here,” one observer quipped, “but instead Boyne’s essentially fighting this war with one hand tied behind his back.”
Another attorney who spoke under conditions of anonymity had a different take.
“Todd is an excellent criminal defense attorney, and this is an extremely difficult case,” the source said. “Give him room to work. If the case is collapsing under its own weight, it will.”
Who’s right? Is Boyne receiving zealous representation, or are his state-appointed lawyers “mailing it in” under pains of systemic retaliation?
The litmus test is what applications will make it before Judge Brown. To date, Boyne’s constitutional claims have been limited.
Boyne’s Connecticut Case Collapsing: Illegal Raid, “Stolen” Evidence, and the Silver Platter
Perhaps the most explosive part of Boyne’s story is what he calls an illegal interstate raid that set the case in motion. In June 2022, Connecticut authorities – unable to find a crime in Connecticut – reached into Virginia to grab Boyne’s belongings.
At 5:15 a.m., a SWAT-style team, including Connecticut State Trooper Samantha McCord, burst into Boyne’s Fairfax County home. They seized his computers and files and whisked them away to Connecticut – without a valid Connecticut warrant or full notice to Virginia officials.
Virginia law explicitly forbids removing seized property across state lines without court permission.
“That never happened,” Boyne said. “This stripped the Fairfax County court of jurisdiction. The case should have ended right there.”
Instead, Connecticut prosecutors kept the digital haul and built their case upon it. Boyne calls the evidence fruit of the poisonous tree, obtained by duping Virginia – a modern “Silver Platter” scheme where one state hands illegally obtained evidence to another.
“The state is prosecuting me with stolen goods,” Boyne said pointedly, “and Jack Doyle knows it.”
In fact, a Virginia prosecutor admitted that the removal of Boyne’s property violated Virginia law. But no judge in either state ordered the evidence returned or the case dropped.
Boyne personally filed federal civil suits over this interstate caper, arguing officials trampled the Fourth Amendment in their zeal to “get” him. Connecticut officials even finagled extradition papers by omitting a critical fact: Virginia has no law against what Boyne did.
Governor Ned Lamont, relying on those papers, signed off on Boyne’s extradition – a move Boyne blasts as “a 14th Amendment violation based on fraud.”
Indeed, it is a constitutional horror show: Connecticut “handed the fruits of an illegal search from one state to another – on a silver platter,” tactics outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Elkins v. United States (1960).
The alleged misconduct doesn’t stop there. Records show Trooper McCord even tried to raid the blog’s European web host with no legal authority, emailing a Dutch company in a wild goose chase. When that failed, McCord and Doyle turned to a friendly judge for a secret Connecticut search warrant – even though state law (CGS § 54-33j) forbids search warrants against news media.
Judge David Gold granted their request and sealed it, letting them hunt Boyne’s sources in the shadows.
From start to finish, Boyne contends, the prosecution’s evidence was gathered by trampling the rules.
“Ned Lamont’s agents broke Virginia law, lied to the Governor of Virginia, and violated my rights,” Boyne recounted, “and now [Lamont] hides behind sovereign immunity like a coward.”
The mounting irregularities make one wonder: If the state had a solid case, why did it need to bend so many laws to pursue it?
Boyne’s Connecticut Case Collapsing: Misconduct Allegations for Prosecutor and Judges
The Connecticut officials driving this case now find the spotlight glaring back at them. Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Jack Doyle, the lead prosecutor, is painted by Boyne and his supporters as a rogue agent with an agenda. Doyle is accused of forum-shopping the case into a favorable courthouse, filing charges in the wrong district, and then shrugging that “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube” when caught.
Doyle sought a gag order to stop Boyne from sharing even redacted evidence with the press. He’s a member of a “Hate Crimes Advisory Council” alongside top judges, which Boyne sees as proof of a biased crusade.
“Jack Doyle has ethical problems… He should be disbarred,” Boyne blasted in the recent interview, arguing that Doyle’s willingness to ignore case law and misuse warrants crosses professional lines.
Prosecutor Doyle appears as little more than a puppet for political bosses who have weaponized the courts to muzzle speech at the behest of his masters.
And what of the judges?
Judge Peter Brown, who oversees Boyne’s criminal case, has drawn scathing criticism for rubber-stamping the prosecution’s moves. Brown kept Boyne jailed without bail for over a year, declaring him a “high-risk” detainee despite no criminal history. He then slapped an ankle GPS monitor on the 70-year-old after release – a monitor so painful that Boyne’s doctor protested.
When Boyne begged for a less intrusive device, Brown refused a hearing and threatened to jail him again for not traveling hundreds of miles to complain in person.
“They’re using the monitor as a leash,” journalist Michael Volpe said. “This isn’t supervision. It’s retaliation.”
Another source levied charges that Brown was a “reverse racist,” who was “hell bent” on seeing Boyne suffer.
“I believe Brown is a reverse racist. The worst Boyne could give is a paper cut. He’s not dangerous – he’s WHITE. And yet black and brown drug dealers and gang bangers come through Brown’s courtroom and the street like a revolving door,” the source said.
Most troubling, Judge Brown has never identified any specific “true threat” in Boyne’s writings. Instead, he loosely referenced the eight blog posts and let the indictment stand sans detail – a probable Sixth Amendment violation of Boyne’s right to know the charges levied against him.
Another key player, Judge David Gold, signed off on the clandestine search warrant for Boyne’s online data, apparently at the urging of higher-ups. Gold approved the warrant on Boyne’s web host the same month Joette Katz published an op-ed declaring the blog unprotected speech.
Coincidence?
Boyne doesn’t think so. He accuses Judge Gold of acting as Katz’s enforcer, breaching Connecticut’s media shield law to do it. In Boyne’s words, Connecticut’s judiciary is behaving like a “trained ape for its masters,” obediently punishing a critic instead of upholding the law.
Such incendiary barbs underscore how deeply Boyne distrusts the very court system now judging him. And with each procedural twist, from sealed warrants to competency exams ordered at the eleventh hour, the case for Boyne’s detractors being biased grows in his mind.
The prosecutorial and judicial conduct on display has raised eyebrows even among seasoned observers – is this zeal for justice, or a vendetta in motion?
Former Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Joette Katz – now a private attorney – allegedly influenced Boyne’s prosecution while publicly denouncing his blog as a “clear and present danger.”
Boyne’s Connecticut Case Collapsing: Joette Katz’s Shadow over the Case
Looming over this courtroom drama is a formidable figure: Joette Katz, a former Connecticut Supreme Court Justice. Though now in private practice, Katz has been unusually invested in Boyne’s case. Boyne alleges that Katz is pulling strings behind the scenes to ensure he is silenced.
His evidence?
A mysterious directive was uncovered in state police notes telling investigators to “Katz – speak to only.”
To Boyne, this cryptic line suggests Katz was running an off-the-books investigation into his blog – effectively directing law enforcement as a private citizen.
If true, it’s a shocking breach.
What’s certain is that Katz has openly clamored for Boyne’s prosecution. In January 2022, she authored a Connecticut Law Tribune op-ed titled “Ugly and Threatening Rhetoric Aimed at Connecticut’s Judiciary: When is Enough Enough?” In it, Katz recounted the blog’s vile attacks (including slurs against her and numerous judges by name) and argued that some speech crosses the line.
“Our right to free speech is not absolute,” Katz wrote, insisting that government “has the power to prevent or punish speech that displays a clear and present danger” to public safety.
She concluded that Boyne’s blog “absolutely” intended to incite violence – essentially calling it unprotected speech.
Around that same time, Judge Gold signed the warrant to seize Boyne’s blogging data, and months later, Boyne was arrested. Katz’s dual role – public speech police in the press and alleged puppetmaster in private – has outraged Boyne.
“Joette Katz made it clear – she wanted to silence me,” he said. “She’s spoken at ADL events about using the criminal justice system to combat speech they don’t like. That’s what’s happening here.”
Indeed, Katz has long been associated with the Anti-Defamation League and efforts to curb hate speech. Boyne’s blog is rife with anti-Jewish invective, and Katz (who is Jewish) appears to have taken it very personally. But should a retired judge be quarterbacking a prosecution of her critic?
Boyne and his defenders call it a blatant conflict of interest, one that has “pretend justice” written all over it.
They note Katz’s powerful connections – a former justice and ex-Child Welfare commissioner – and suspect that when she calls, the current judges jump. The Katz factor turns Boyne’s case into something bigger: a referendum on insiders using the system to settle scores.
If a blog post can provoke a former justice to allegedly direct state power at a citizen, what does that say about impartiality?
Katz, for her part, frames it as a matter of public safety: stop a tragedy before it happens. But to Boyne, she’s nothing less than an architect of repression, proving his point that Connecticut’s judiciary cares more about protecting itself than the Constitution.
Boyne’s Connecticut Case Collapsing: Retaliation in Robes?
Paul Boyne’s battle raises disturbing questions that reach far beyond his own fate. Is his prosecution a legitimate response to threatening language – or political retaliation dressed up in legal robes?
Free speech advocates are closely watching what they call a backdoor prior restraint: Connecticut not only jailed a blogger for his words, but also moved to gag him from discussing evidence and forbid others from republishing his claims. Orders restricting a defendant’s speech and press access without a hearing draw comparisons to star chamber tactics.
Boyne was denied access to his seized computers and initially forced to litigate from a jail cell with handwritten motions. He could have bonded out almost immediately with 7% down and a filed form, but his lawyers sat on their hands. He spent 17 months after his arrest behind bars awaiting trial – effectively punished without conviction, ostensibly for public safety.
Now, he’s in his Virginia home on an ankle bracelet, causing him serious health problems and violating ADA requirements. The ankle bracelet may lead to amputation of his foot.
“I can’t argue forcefully about it, because Brown might turn around and say, ‘Okay. We’re sending you back to jail. Problem solved, ” Boyne said. “I have other health complications and require care that the Connecticut prison system cannot provide.”
A return to incarceration smacks of institutional homicide. They can’t silence Boyne, so the powers that be will simply kill him using the machinery of the state.
“They know they can’t convict me, so the punishment is the process itself,” Boyne said.
His case encapsulates a nightmare scenario for civil liberties: prior restraint orders, secret warrants, evidence obtained unlawfully, prolonged pretrial detention, and an overt attempt to criminalize political hyperbole. It has already drawn parallels to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Counterman v. Colorado (2023), which tightened the definition of “true threats” – a ruling that could undermine Connecticut’s charges if applied.
Yet so far, Connecticut’s courts have shrugged at free speech concerns, even as federal judges express unease. The spectacle of a former justice (Katz) publicly demanding Boyne’s silence while allegedly aiding his prosecution underscores a troubling fusion of personal vendetta and state power.
Where does zealous law enforcement end and oppression begin?
Observers note that incendiary speech is flourishing across the internet, but prosecuting it as “stalking” is virtually unheard of – except in Connecticut.
“Look at what’s happening to dissenters across the country,” Boyne said. “If they can criminalize speech under the guise of cyberstalking, they can silence anyone who criticizes the government.”
As this case careens forward, it puts Connecticut’s reputation on the line: Will it uphold bedrock First Amendment principles or set a precedent for speech-based incarceration? Boyne’s final warning is as stark as it is somber.
“Big Brother is alive and well,” he told us. “Your Constitution is meaningless.”
