Free Speech Advocate at Yale Claims She Was Arrested for Something She Never Said
“It took almost a year, tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and endless stress before the nightmare ended on March 27, when the prosecutor finally dropped all charges.”
She seems to suggest that she was targeted over her politics. Is that so hard to believe?
The New York Post reports:
I’m a Yale free-speech champion — arrested for words I never said
I never thought I’d end up in handcuffs and a jail cell for something I didn’t say.
But last May, police in New Haven, Conn., arrested me — because a parking attendant falsely claimed I had used a racial slur against him nearly a year earlier.
I denied it. I asked the cops to check the parking lot’s surveillance video.
They didn’t — and the state charged me first with disorderly conduct, then with three counts of breach of peace in the second degree.
It took almost a year, tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and endless stress before the nightmare ended on March 27, when the prosecutor finally dropped all charges.
Why? “Insufficient evidence,” “inconsistencies,” “credibility issues,” video that “clearly contradicted” the accuser’s claims — and a possibility that I wasn’t even the right person.
The judge dismissed the case.
If this can happen to me — a First Amendment advocate with resources, legal counsel and a public reputation to defend — it can happen to anyone.
In 2011, while still a student at Yale University, I founded the Buckley Institute, named for conservative hero William F. Buckley, Jr.
Our mission is to promote intellectual diversity and freedom of speech at Yale.
For the past decade, we’ve hosted an annual Disinvitation Dinner featuring speakers who have been disinvited from and disrupted on college campuses.
And now here I was, facing not merely an attempt at cancellation, but actual criminal charges that could mean prison if I was convicted.
It did not exactly feel like a coincidence.
The interest in my case seemed to have more to do with what the Buckley Institute represents than anything I ever did, or was accused of doing.
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Comments
Arrested for speech. Sounds like present-day United Kingdom.
One more example of why the race card is increasingly ignored.
Is there any recourse open for this hate-crime victim to recover the expenses she incurred all because some parking attendant claimed his feelings were allegedly hurt by some white woman he couldn’t identify, and the police and prosecutor carried out a shoddy (at best) investigation of an apparently non-existent crime?
Nope. For one thing, the persecutor’s office has immunity. “Yes, we destroyed your reputation and drove you to penury, but that’s just too bad.”
Also true of a civil suit??
I don’t know, Mr. Bowman. I wish I did.
Against the prosecutor, yes. Prosecutors have absolute immunity. The accuser could be sued, but probably has nothing to take. The church could be sued for defamation, and it has assets.
Surely a civil suit would be possible given the parking attendant lied, police and prosecutors ignored surveillance video, and the media opted for Conservative = racist stories, including quoting a pastor claiming Noble was guilty despite his own church having the video footage that ultimately vindicated her?
It seems like nobody wanted to bother with the evidence, they just wanted to lynch a Conservative!
Surely there is recourse for such injustice?