- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.''
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- Matrisciana's defense at his trial centered on his right
to freedom of expression.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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