Simon & Schuster v. Members of the New York State Crime Victims Board - Significance, Crime For Profit

sam petitioner respondent decision

Petitioner

Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Respondent

New York Crime Victims Board

Petitioner's Claim

That New York's "Son of Sam" law restricts free speech and is therefore inconsistent with the First Amendment.

Chief Lawyer for Petitioner

Howard L. Zwickel

Chief Lawyer for Respondent

Ronald S. Rauchberg

Justices for the Court

Harry A. Blackmun, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor (writing for the Court), William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White

Justices Dissenting

None (Clarence Thomas did not participate)

Place

Washington, D.C.

Date of Decision

10 December 1991

Decision

Overturned the two lower courts' decisions ruling that New York's Son of Sam law was inconsistent with the First Amendment.

Related Cases

Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92 (1972).
Arkansas Writers' Project v. Ragland, 481 U.S. 221 (1987).
Leathers v. Medlock, 499 U.S. 439 (1991).

Sources

Garbus, Martin. Let's Do Away with "Son of Sam" Laws. Publisher's Weekly, Vol. 242, no. 7, p. 19.

Simon Schuster v. Members of the New York State Crime Victims Board - Significance

The Supreme Court ruled that New York's particular Son of Sam law was overbroad. The law would penalize any book in which the author had admitted a crime. Also the Court ruled that the statute levied a financial penalty on a certain type of speech that it imposed on no other type of speech. The Supreme Court held that this particular law was unconstitutional, but since that time other constitution…

Simon Schuster v. Members of the New York State Crime Victims Board - Crime For Profit

Should crime pay? Do criminals, convicted or not, have the right to profit from selling their true crime stories to publishers or film makers? Proponents maintain if criminals are not paid they will not write, and the public is extremely interested in crime, criminals, and criminal justice. Publicity surrounding crime arouses such curiosity. If criminals did not write, the public would be denied t…

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