Second Circuit Court of Appeals Stays Sentence for Meme-Maker, Pending Appeal
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has stayed the sentence of meme-maker Douglass Mackey pending his appeal after the Department of Justice (DOJ) accused him of committing election interference in 2016.
Mackey was sentenced to 7 months in prison for “conspiracy against rights” when he shared a satirical online post in 2016 that was later deemed “voter suppression” by the DOJ. The case, however, has been widely regarded as a debate over what kind of dialogue is protected under the First Amendment, and more specifically, whether or not satire is Constitutionally protected speech.
“For the first time in U.S. history, a private citizen has been sentenced to prison for sharing political ‘misinformation,'” Mackey’s legal team stated in his motion for release.
Defendant-Appellant, Mackey, a “self-described Internet troll who posted hundreds of Twitter messages daily,” according to his legal team, shared a meme encouraging voters to “text” their vote for a candidate in the 2016 Presidential Election. “Avoid the line. Vote from home,” the post claimed. Similar posts had been shared by several X (then Twitter) users in a comical and satirical manner, Mackey had not created the post but rather re-shared it from another individual.
Despite this, “he was arrested, and charged with one count of violating 18 U.S.C. § 241, a Civil War-era statute that forbids conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” any person in the exercise of a federal right,” his motion for release read. “[This] is an unprecedented reading of [the] statute, contrary to its text and history, foreclosed by the First Amendment, and in the teeth of a host of canons of construction,” his legal team argued.
On Monday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a lower court and granted Mackey’s motion for bond pending appeal. “This ruling is huge,” Markey said in an article published on Substack. “[It] means that the appeals court decided that my appeal presents ‘substantial’ and ‘debatable’ issues of law that, if resolved in my favor, will result in my conviction being vacated.”
Since his conviction, Mackey has received an outpour of support from conservatives who have condemned politicized DOJ charges, which were brought forth several years after the post was made, in 2021.
TPUSA Contributor Benny Johnston posted on X that the ruling was a “massive victory for free speech and a humiliating defeat for power-obsessed tyrants who wish to weaponize our judicial system against inconvenient political opponents.” Others online have echoed his supportive statement, asserting that this case will set the legal precedent on whether or not online satirical speech is protected by the U.S. judicial system or not.
Mackey and his legal team promised to “swiftly file an appeal with the Supreme Court,” should they lose their appeal in the Second Circuit Court.
