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Wednesday, July 11, 2001
THE BOYS ON THE TRACKS CASE Libel judgment reversed on appeal Court
rules Arkansas deputies public figures without standing
� 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
A federal appeals court yesterday threw out a defamation judgment against a
filmmaker critical of former President Clinton’s alleged role in the infamous
Arkansas "boys on the tracks" case, ruling two sheriff's deputies mentioned in
the documentary had no standing to sue.
In dismissing a $598,750 judgment against Patrick Matrisciana, president of
Jeremiah Films, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis concluded the
deputies were indeed public figures and failed to prove the documentary was
reckless in its portrayal of them as law enforcement officers implicated in the
murders of two young boys and a subsequent cover-up of their deaths.
The video, "Obstruction of Justice: the Mena Connection,'' focused on the
unsolved deaths of Kevin Ives and Don Henry. In the documentary, Pulaski County
sheriff's Lts. Jay Campbell and Kirk Lane were listed among six law enforcement
officers that alleged eyewitnesses said could be implicated "in the murders and
the subsequent cover-up.''
The court said the sheriff's lieutenants were public figures and had to
prove Matrisciana knew the information was false or that he was reckless in
weighing information presented in the film.
Ives and Henry were found dead in 1987 after being hit by a train while
laying on the tracks. Their deaths were initially ruled accidental due to
marijuana intoxication, but after a second autopsy a lawsuit filed by Ives'
parents suggested the boys were murdered and their bodies laid on the tracks.
"As the theory goes, they were first killed and their bodies then laid on
the tracks to make their deaths appear accidental,'' the court wrote.
Matrisciana's defense at his trial centered on his right to freedom of
expression.
He said that, according to his research, the boys were walking down the
train tracks about 4 a.m. Aug. 23, 1987, when they came upon a small plane
dropping a cargo of illegal drugs as it flew without lights 100 feet from the
ground. A witness reported seeing the boys seized by two men, and their bodies
were found after they had been run over by a train.
The documentary alleged that illegal drugs were routinely flown into the
airport at Mena in western Arkansas during the 1980s and that Clinton, then
Arkansas' governor, knew about it but did nothing to combat it.
Matrisciana, who also produced "The Clinton Chronicles,'' which took a
highly critical view of the former president, said in a telephone interview from
Los Angeles that justice had been served.
WND Editor Joseph Farah, who served as an expert witness on journalistic
standards and practices for the defense in the 1999 case, characterized the
verdict as a victory for the First Amendment.
“There was a big problem with the jury verdict from the start,” said Farah.
“For starters, the cops were indeed investigated by law enforcement officials in
Arkansas. An eyewitness placed them at the scene for Jean Duffey, a former
Saline County prosecutor herself, and Linda Ives, the mother of one of the boys,
both of whom participated in the making of the video. Furthermore, even if the
cops were innocent of any involvement in the case, they were not libeled by the
video, because there was no ‘reckless disregard for the truth’ by the
filmmakers, as I testified in the trial.”
Farah also said the case has some striking parallels to a $165 million
defamation suit pending against WorldNetDaily over an 18-part investigative
series into political corruption in Tennessee involving former Vice President Al
Gore. A legal defense fund has been established on behalf of WorldNetDaily.
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body
of people always possess arms..."
-- Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters
from the Federal Farmer 53 (1788)
AB
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