Legal News

?Danger to the Community?: Bail Denied for Provocateur Hal Turner

By Ashby Jones

“Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions.”

– Blogger and radio talk-show host Hal Turner, in a June 2 blog post, referring to Seventh Circuit judges Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook and William Bauer, in the wake of the trio’s recent ruling upholding two handgun bans in Chicago.

If those quotes sound familiar, it’s because we set them up the same way in a blog post in June, in which we wrote about Turner’s arrest in New Jersey. Given a bit of new news about Turner, the words are too, well, provocative not to put atop the marquee once again.

The news is this: Turner was denied bail on Tuesday. A federal judge in Chicago, Martin Ashman said Turner - accused of threatening to assault and murder three federal judges - is still a danger to the community.

The news is perhaps a little surprising given that Turner, despite his fiery words, was once a paid FBI informant who turned over a silencer to the feds and even passed on information about a threat against President Obama. Click here for the Chicago Sun-Times story.

Despite his helpful deeds, Ashman said the fact that Turner from his New Jersey prison cell managed to record and post on the Internet a telephone conversation that included the names of his arresting FBI agents "tells me something about the disposition of Mr. Turner.” Turner is accused of attempting to instigate violence against the three Seventh Circuit judges. Turner posted the judges' names, photographs, phone numbers, office address and room numbers, according to charges.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan called Turner's role as an informant a "sideshow," to the question of bond, saying Turner simply passed along tips and rumors to the FBI.

One of his lawyers, Michael Orozco, has said that Turner was nothing more than a "shock jock," whose on-air rhetoric was out of line with the man who went home to his wife and family at day's end.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 12, 2009 (boomark / email).