= in cinema 
= on DVD 
= on videotape 
= on TV 
= book
Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells the True Story of Murder by the Book (1999)
by Rod Smolla
Reviewed 2002-08-01: In 1993 an estranged husband hired a small-time hood to kill his wife and handicapped child so he could collect the insurance money. The hood also murdered the child's nurse — and closely followed a how-to, murder-for-hire book called Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent 
Contractors, published in 1983 by Paladin Press. After the culprits were caught and prosecuted, the family filed a wrongful death suit against the book publisher. Deliberate Intent is the autobiographical story of Rodney A. Smolla, a law professor and First Amendment expert who on this occasion played for the other team. In 1997, he and his team won a wrongful death civil judgment against Paladin before the 4th Circuit and, two years later (after Supreme Court certiorari was denied), won a civil settlement and got the book banned.Smolla's small book is organized chronologically and tells a personal story as well as a detailed legal story. His descriptions of the "dream team" prosecuting Paladin's owner, Peder Lund, and of his own moral conflict in taking the case in the first place (he usually argues to expand, not restrict, speech), are competently narrated. The digressions in which Smolla recreated some classroom discussions of First Amendment cases helped me to understand the history and application of free speech and free press issues. His descriptive skills are adequate to the task, but I found myself skimming them to get to the good stuff — and Smolla's book is full of good stuff: I love a well crafted argument, after all.
However, I am troubled by the legal story in Deliberate Intent. For one thing, Smolla criticizes Paladin for publishing a murderer's how-to manual, yet he includes extensive quotations from the text of Hit Man. He admits his victory could have consequences for First
Amendment jurisprudence, yet he blithely passes that off, as if to say that's not his problem. In fact, I find it telling that, while he quotes quite liberally from judicial opinions in his favor, there is scarcely a word from the numerous amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs filed in opposition to his suit. Far from being none of his concern, the aftermath of Rice, et al. v. Paladin Press could be quite chilling. Even Smolla admits that future courts could misread and disastrously broaden the decision in cases that are not so clear-cut.I think it is significant, though Smolla disagrees, that this decision was reached by a 4th Circuit judge who should have recused himself: his father had been murdered. The case hinges on a wafer-thin distinction that has real-world implications: it was decided that if Hit Man had taught murder techniques, but did not advocate murder ("steel to action"), it would have been protected speech; if the book had advocated murder but not provided technical, how-to details, it would still have been protected speech. But by both teaching and advocating murder, Hit Man was not protected speech. But this is still government censorship, and of an invidious kind, since — very much like pornography — how is anyone to know if it is harmful unless one subjects oneself to its presumed harmful effects. With censorship, we're taking the word of the government that something is not good for us to see — there is no independent opinion, not even our own.
Most obvious is the question of how the decision, and ban on print publication, affect the Internet. The text of Hit Man is available online, and has been since 1999 (sorry; you will have to find it for yourself, as I did). The Rice plaintiffs demonstrated to the 4th Circuit's satisfaction a cause-effect relationship between reading the book and killing three people. This link is not so obvious to me: there are numerous people (myself among them) who have read the book and never killed, and will never contemplate killing, anyone. This is just the sort of tired argument made against sex and violence on TV (the anti-sex part I don't understand: if people see too much sex on TV will they engage in... lovemaking? Scary!). The argument doesn't wash here, either.
What is crucial to remember, when attempting to amend the First Amendment in this way, is that you are taking the scope of responsibility far beyond the trigger man; you are, in effect, soliciting deep pockets to ease your pain and handing permission to an impersonal power to tell you what it is suitable to read. I ask myself this question: if Paladin had been a big, multinational publisher instead of (nearly) a mom-and-pop operation, might the outcome have been very different? For example, the US government itself publishes how-to manuals on killing efficiently, on making bombs and lethal weapons. They're for the military, so that's OK, right?
Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells the True Story of Murder by the Book by Rod Smolla. 276 pp. New York: Crown Publishers, 1999. ISBN 0-609-60413-9.
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Ronald Bruce Meyer is a freelance reviewer.