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Judge Slams Blogger's Special Treatment

By Robert J. Ambrogi

A federal prosecutor's decision to let prominent political blogger Andrew Sullivan off the hook for a marijuana bust was condemned yesterday by a federal magistrate judge as unjustified favoritism. But finding that he was without power to override the prosecutor's decision, the magistrate judge dismissed the charges nonetheless. "The only reasons given for the dismissal flout the bedrock principle of our legal system that all persons stand equal before the law," U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings of Massachusetts wrote in a memorandum opinion issued yesterday. But "fidelity to the law" governing a prosecutor's discretion to dismiss a criminal matter required him to grant the request, Collings said. The genesis of Collings' ire was Sullivan's arrest July 13 by rangers at the Cape Cod National Seashore for marijuana possession. A British citizen who has lived in the U.S. since 1984, Sullivan is a former editor of The New Republic who became one of the first of a breed of high-profile political bloggers when he launched his blog, The Daily Dish, in 2000. His blog is now hosted by The Atlantic Online, where he is a member of the editorial staff. The park ranger who arrested Sullivan charged him with a...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on September 11, 2009 (boomark / email).