For weeks, Monica Ciardi vented on Facebook about her ex-husband, their bitter child custody dispute, and the Morris County judges overseeing it, calling the jurists liars and demanding their resignations in posts that sometimes numbered dozens a day.
She knew her rants might rankle, so she posted about that too, citing a federal court ruling protecting social media posts as free speech.
“ZERO RETALIATION IS PERMITTED AGAINST ME FOR EXERCISING MY RIGHTS. Take notice,” she wrote on Dec. 15.
A week later, police swarmed her Chatham home and took her to jail in handcuffs after Morris County prosecutors decided at least one post about the judges amounted to terroristic threats, harassment, and retaliation against a public official.
“This is my personal Facebook page with 50 people on it,” Ciardi said. “They came to my page and then turned around and said I harassed them. That’s like if I know you don’t like me, I go to your house, I stand on your front porch, I overhear you saying bad things about me, and then I call the cops and say, ‘She’s harassing me. I know I’m on her porch, but you should just hear what she said.’”
Now, free speech advocates are watching the case, which her attorney characterizes as “the government punishing and jailing a woman for simply speaking her mind.”
“There’s really nothing criminal about what she did. Is it annoying? Yes. Is it a little over the top? Yes. But is it criminal? Absolutely not,” said assistant deputy public defender Mackenzie Shearer, who has asked a judge to dismiss the case. “Basically, she’s journaling online.”
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