Intellectual Property Law

Mom Loses Bid for Purdue Bomb Hoax Suspect?s Freedom

By Kevin Poulsen

The mother of a 16-year-old internet prank call star charged with phoning in a bomb hoax to Purdue University has lost her habeas corpus lawsuit demanding his release, meaning the teen will continue to be held without bail in Indiana.

Annette Lundeby relocated from her North Carolina home to an Indiana motel room last month to personally fight for her son’s freedom. She filed a 14-page brief in federal court reasserting her claim that her son was with her in church at the time of the February 15 telephone call that summoned a bomb squad and evacuated the Mechanical Engineering building at Purdue. She also leveled a series of more exotic arguments, including challenging the authority of her son’s prosecutor to represent the United States.

The judge overseeing Lundeby’s son’s case, which is sealed because he’s a minor, summarily dismissed her petition on Wednesday, in part on the grounds that the teenager’s own lawyer has already unsuccessfully sought his pre-trial release.

“Assuming Mrs. Lundeby stands in her son?s shoes for habeas purposes — a dubious assumption — she hasn?t exhausted the available remedies or shown that exceptional circumstances justify the relief requested,” U.S. district Court Chief Judge Robert Miller wrote.

“A.L.[the teen] may raise challenges to his pretrial confinement and the sufficiency of the indictment as well as jurisdictional and due process concerns in the pending pretrial proceedings and, if desired, on appeal,” the judge continued.  ”A.L. already has challenged his pretrial detention unsuccessfully and may take an interlocutory appeal of his pretrial detention. … Mrs. Lundeby hasn’t identified any nonfrivolous basis for pursuing habeas relief in advance of trial.”

The arrest of Lundeby?s son stoked widespread outrage on the web earlier last month after Raleigh, North Carolina?s WRAL-5 reported on the case, noting that the boy is a patriotic homeschooled student with an American flag bedspread. Much of the online fury was triggered by Lundeby’s incorrect claim — uncritically reported by the station — that the boy was being held without any legal rights on the authority of the 2001 USA Patriot Act.

Lundeby later acknowledged that her son was secretly “Tyrone” — a notorious prank phone caller who performed for a live internet audience in exchange for PayPal donations. In some recordings of calls attributed to Tyrone, the caller is heard making bomb threats, though no recording of the Purdue call has surfaced publicly.

See Also:

• Mother of Purdue Bomb Hoax Suspect Sues for Son’s Release
• Teenage Bomb Threat Suspect Was Internet Prank-Call Star
• Bloggers, TV, Go Nuts Over Misleading ‘Patriot Act’ Arrest Claim

Full post as published by Threat Level on June 03, 2009 (boomark / email).