The following is a press release from the CBLDF.
Gordon Lee Trial Date Set – CBLDF Needs Your Help!
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund urgently needs your help. This August, the long-running case of Georgia v. Gordon Lee will finally go to trial, with court costs expected to hit $20,000.
For nearly three years the Fund has defended Georgia retailer Gordon Lee, seeing him through multiple arraignments and procedures, and racking up $80,000 in legal bills. The charges stem from a Halloween 2004 incident in which Lee handed out, among other free comics, an anthology featuring an excerpt from the critically acclaimed graphic novel The Salon. The segment depicted a historically accurate meeting between 20th Century art icons Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, the latter depicted in the nude. It was a harmless sequence, no more explicit than the nudity displayed in the award winning Watchmen. Yet because the title found its way into the hands of a minor, Floyd County prosecutors hit Lee with two felony counts and five misdemeanors. The Fund eventually knocked out most of the charges, but must now defeat the two remaining misdemeanor counts of Distribution of Harmful to Minors Material, each carrying a penalty of up to one year in prison and up to $1,000 in fines.
The case is slated to go to trial the week of August 13. We urgently need your support in order to wage the best defense possible against these remaining charges, and that means raising the $20,000 that the trial is expected to cost. Here’s how you can help:
Make A Monetary Donation: Every dollar counts, so please visit the cbldf.org and make a tax-deductible contribution today. As a thank-you for making a donation of $30 or more, the Fund will give you a brand new t-shirt displaying the text of the First Amendment in the shape of an American flag. Show your commitment to free speech, and your support for this very important case.
Join The CBLDF: Now is the time to join or renew your membership in the Fund. Your member dollars provide the baseline of support that we need to perform our casework, and defend your right to buy whatever comics you wish. If you join now with a basic membership of $25 you will receive a CBLDF Member Card, featuring new Groo art by the one-and-only Sergio Aragones, as well as a subscription to our news publication Busted!, and special admission to CBLDF events across the country. If you join at a level of $100 or more, you will also receive one of the new First Amendment t-shirts.
Donate Original Art & Collectibles: With summer conventions upon us, the Fund needs original art, high-grade comics, and other collectible items to make the most of our summer auctions. Please e-mail cbldf1@gmail.com for more information about how to donate to our auctions, or with a description of your intended donation. If your donation is accepted for our summer auctions, you will receive a letter of acknowledgment and a 2007 membership. To ensure that your donation is received safely, please do not send physical items until accepted by the CBLDF.
With Gordon Lee’s freedom in the balance, the CBLDF needs everyone who values Free Expression in comic books to do his or her part to support this very important case. Please visit www.cbldf.org and make your contribution today.
Donations: http://cbldf.safeshopper.com/12/cat12.htm?479
Membership: http://cbldf.safeshopper.com/7/cat7.htm?945
Other Donations: cbldf1@gmail.com
PAD
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It is ridiculous that this case has been dragging on for three years. The Floyd County DA, if she had any sense of decency, would resign in disgrace! This was a sham of a case to begin with, and it has been made all the worse by prosecutorial incompetence taking place under her watch.
It’s time to let Gordon Lee get on with his life, for Christ’s sake.
The Gordon Lee case is what got me to donate to the CBLDF, and it exemplifies why the organization is so vital to the comic-book industry. Rather than allow the Floyd County DA to simply strongarm Mr. Lee, the CBLDF provided him with lawyers who have expertise in First Amendment cases. They’ve given him a fighting chance.
But the fight’s not over yet. Gordon’s livelihood and freedom are still at stake. PLEASE — if you feel as I do about the importance of free speech, contribute to the fund!
I think I posted this on the Newsarama forums.
The D.A. reminds me of the old saying,
“A Fantatic is someone who redoubles his efforts, after he has forgotten his aim.”
Donate to the CBLDF folks, I am disAbled and live off my disAbilty payments. If I can cough up dough, so can you!
Bobb (i.I.)
Hey, I just made a donation. If the powers that be can prevail on this case, many more D.A.s throughout the country will be targeting comic shops in the next few years.
It is ridiculous that this case has been dragging on for three years.
Makes you wonder if Lee has been shuttled off to Gitmo as well, doesn’t it?
It also appears as though the prosecutors have intentionally dragged this out as a way to drain Lee and the CBLDF of funds, as the money the CBLDF have put forth to this case quite possibly could prevent them from helping as much in others.
Maybe this DA learned how to prosecute from Michael Nifong.
Done and done.
I signed up for membership (Ðámņ, I hadn’t done that YET?) and mailed the check over lunch. (Paying by check because I don’t want to lose even 2-3% to credit card company. CBLDF gets the full amount.)
Posted by Craig J. Ries at June 22, 2007 02:27 PM
Maybe this DA learned how to prosecute from Michael Nifong.
then hopefully we can expect the same outcome.
Vindication. and the DA disbarred (sp?)
Just wanted to say I heard your appearance on the Damien Darko show, and found it very interesting, informative and entertaining.
Hope to meet you in San Diego this year.
Thanks,
Rob
Posted by Bill Myers
It is ridiculous that this case has been dragging on for three years. The Floyd County DA, if she had any sense of decency, would resign in disgrace! This was a sham of a case to begin with, and it has been made all the worse by prosecutorial incompetence taking place under her watch.
You think that’s bad? Google up the Ed Kramer case in Gwinnett County. So far as i know, Kramer is still under house arrest and no nearer to coming to trial – for a 2000 arrest! (http://www.edkramer.org/)
(Which, incidentally, was precipitated by an anonymous phone call; after Ed’s arrest, a would-be anonymous poster [too computer-illiterate to prevent their real name from being encoded into the HTML of a webpage they put up] began posting more and more hysterical screeds to newsgroups, announcing that anyone who even allowed as how Kramer deserved a fair trial – much less that he *might* be not guilty – was being reported to the Gwinnett DA as another pederast. One wonders if the anonymous dime-dropper and the hysterical online hatemonger might be the same person. A person i regret to admit was once a friend of mine. Before they screwed over *another* friend…)
But i digress…
#1. I don’t read comic books and have not since I was 12–even PAD’s.
#2. I wish PAD would write more novels instead of spending so much time on comic books.
#3. However, I think this situation sucks.
I sent $100 when PAD first posted about this case a long time ago. Ðámņ. I thought this had been resolved by now. Obviously not. I sent off another check yesterday. The t-shirt you get with a donation looks very cool. Cannot wait to get it.
Long live the First Amendment!
I don’t really follow comic books anymore either, but I think this is an important issue for all Americans, not just comic book fans. So I would suggest that everyone reading PAD’s blog spread the word about this case and the CBLDF– tell your friends, email your family, write about it on your blog. I think this is the kind of thing that most people don’t really give much thought to– “Oh, it’s a stranger who sells a product I’m not interested in– who cares?” But we should all care, if we care at all about our rights.
I don’t really follow comic books anymore either, but I think this is an important issue for all Americans, not just comic book fans. So I would suggest that everyone reading PAD’s blog spread the word about this case and the CBLDF– tell your friends, email your family, write about it on your blog. I think this is the kind of thing that most people don’t really give much thought to– “Oh, it’s a stranger who sells a product I’m not interested in– who cares?” But we should all care, if we care at all about our rights.
Peter,
I’ve made some modest donations to the CBLDF (because I am a modest fella of modest means) and have been spreading the word at places like Newsarama. But Gordon Lee’s ášš is on the line here, and moreover, the principle of free speech is on the line as well. I’m sayin’, I’d like to do more.
I can’t donate much more than I already have (although another donation over and above my annual membership is on its way) and I don’t have anything worth donating for auction. Is there anything else I can do to help fight the fight, though? If so, please let me know.
Thanks.
Posted by: Bradley at June 24, 2007 04:02 PM
But we should all care, if we care at all about our rights.
You are a wise man.
Amen, Bradley. Amen.
Have there been attempts to fight it outside the courts, like in the press?
Micha, comics-related Web sites like Newsarama have been covering it quite a bit. I’ve also seen it covered in a number of “civilian” publications, including “Wired” and “The Huffington Post.” I don’t know how much activism there’s been outside the comics community, though.
It’s strange that comic based movies are making hundreds of millions — and not only mainstream superhero ones — but a regular comic vendor finds himself in this kind of situation.
Hmm. Good reminder: my membership expired years ago, far as I can tell. (Still been buying the t-shirts, but I haven’t gotten a copy of Busted! in a long time.) Fixed; thanks…
Hmm. Good reminder: my membership expired years ago, far as I can tell. (Still been buying the t-shirts, but I haven’t gotten a copy of Busted! in a long time.) Fixed; thanks…
Hmm. Good reminder: my membership expired years ago, far as I can tell. (Still been buying the t-shirts, but I haven’t gotten a copy of Busted! in a long time.) Fixed; thanks…
Hmm. Good reminder: my membership expired years ago, far as I can tell. (Still been buying the t-shirts, but I haven’t gotten a copy of Busted! in a long time.) Fixed; thanks…
I know Gordon personally, having spent three-and-a-half years going to college in Rome, Georgia. In addition to being the local comic shop owner, the newly-wed is the facilitator of what must be the overwhelming majority of karoake in the city.
He can’t sing Eminem worth a dámņ, but he’s a decent guy, and it’s ridiculous that this case has cost him so much time and energy. Thank goodness for the CBLDF and its contributors.
Here’s hoping this case has an intelligent jury lined up for it. Surely just holding the picture up next to a pic of Micheangelo’s David should be enough to get sane person to realize how idiotic the charges are. Theoretically at least, lol.
$20,000 dollars in legal fees, dámņ. I hate that all it takes in this country for somebody to be completely ruined is some idiot telling the authorities that they’re up to something bad. How can people even pretend this is a free country? They need to start teaching law to kids when they’re in elementary school so that lawyers won’t be such a rare commodity and people won’t have to pay every cent they’ve ever made just to stay out of jail.
News like this is so frustrating. It’s hard to think of anything but “AAAAAAAAAH!”
I made my donation last week and am now the proud wearer of a great looking tee shirt bearing the words of the First Amendment.
Good luck, Gordon!
Adam, someone has to paraody Eminem and have fun with it besides Weird Al!