i think there’s a reason that the da’s office waited until (long after) the schiffman emails to charge and arrest golb. i think there’s a reason they limited the charges to only those involving forgery, impersonation, and identity theft surrounding the schiffman case. (golb took out other emails in the names of other individuals, but schiffman’s was the highest profile impersonation.) while he certainly intended to harass/defame me and others, those items are rightly resolved in civil court. you’ll notice that in all of the counts against golb, none of them involve what he did to me and other scholars prior to the schiffman impersonation. it appears the defense is attempting to blur defamation with impersonation, but the da’s office’s case is quite focused. however, the growth and escalation of the smear campaign from one of criticism on comments and blog posts to the schiffman impersonation over the course of a couple of years should demonstrate that this was not some one-time mistake or simple joke, but part of a premeditated, well-organized, well-executed campaign to harm scholars.

I am not very interested in the Qumran debate, but I think the legal case is interesting. I am not a lawyer, but I only see one thing that I understand to be illegal in the case. The guy obviously impersonated Dr. Schiffman and harrassed him by writing his students in one email. The plagiarism accusation might be wrong, but he can still claim it if he wanted to, since he seems to offer what he considers to be good proof. I don’t see that as illegal, but I don’t understand the plagiarism charge. The sock puppets were morally wrong, but maybe not legally wrong. I also don’t understand if he impersonated other real people besides Dr. Schiffman in these emails.

Kenneth Greifer

i disagree on the dismissal. some of the charges, maybe. but as for the big ones, they’ll continue on to trial. the golbs wanted a soapbox to hold a referendum on the dead sea scrolls, the academy, plagiarism, etc. like always, they just want the media attention, and will use concepts like ’scientific integrity’ and ‘free speech’ as vehicles to promote their personal agendas.

anyone can see that the intent was to bring career harm to those they attacked. and if they ask me to testify, i can specifically enumerate the losses in jobs and dollars, as well as the attempt to keep me from receiving my degree that resulted form this campaign. and i’m not even adding loss of time and mental anguish, etc.

you’re correct. the parody argument is nonsensical. but your reasoning made me chuckle.

they are trying for a monetary damage technicality on the forgery and impersonation charges. that is, of course the criteria for a civil suit. so it appears the tactic is to argue that this is a civil matter and not a criminal matter, and then hope no one brings civil charges or that they can successfully argue that there were no monetary ‘damages’ in civil court. that appears to be what they are doing.

I think that most of these counts will be dismissed from the criminal case, however. Free Speech is a fundamental value in our legal system, valued by both the left and the right, the ACLU and the ACLJ. The criminal case will come down to whether impersonating Schiffman was done with some intent to actually harm him.

I don’t think that the argument that it was a parody will get very far. There’s a total absense of any sense of humor.

are they really going to try to make this into a referendum on the dss? on schiffman? because if they try that:

a) i was right. that’s what i said they’d do all along. he know he’s guilty, so they’ll take one last shot at publicity by getting an opportunity in court to say norman golb has been ignored or schiffman ripped him off or both. that’s what they wanted all along.

b) they’ll lose. raphael golb broke the law. he went too far. and he knows it. the ‘freedom of speech’ argument is a weak attempt to blur the civil case with the criminal one.

seriously, the entire intro looks like golb’s version/rebuttal to my http://who-is-charles-gadda.com log.

There are three counts that are not part of the motion to dismiss.

There are some howlers in there, including a reference to Geoff Hudson’s bizarre claims about the Aliases of Jeffrey Gibson. (IIRC Geoff Hudson has accused me of being Jeffrey Gibson, but I think that blog or website is no longer public.)