Court to review ‘Son of Sam’ law

Wednesday, Sept. 1, 1999 | 10:22 a.m.

All seven justices agreed to review the constitutionality of the state's version of the "Son of Sam" law, which entitles felons' victims to the proceeds of their stories.

The original law, in New York, was ruled unconstitutional in 1991 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which said the law violated free speech and was so broad that it would have applied to the Autobiography of Malcom X and Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience."

A state appeals court, ruling in the Sinatra case, said May 27 that the California law was narrower than the New York measure and did not violate convicted criminals' freedom of expression. The court also said felons who committed their crimes before the law passed in 1986 were covered by the law.

The state's high court set that ruling aside Wednesday and will schedule a hearing at a later date.

The California law requires convicted felons who sell their stories for articles, books, television appearances or films to surrender the proceeds. Victims have five years to claim the money as compensation for damages they suffered, and after that the balance goes to the state.

The law was challenged by Barry Keenan, leader of three kidnappers who abducted the 19-year-old Sinatra from Harrah's Casino at Lake Tahoe in 1963. He was released unharmed after a ransom payment.

Keenan, who blamed his actions on drugs and alcohol, spent less than five years in prison and now is a land developer in Mississippi.

After a magazine interview with Keenan was published last year, he and the writer sold the movie rights to Columbia pictures. But Sinatra got a court order preventing the studio from paying Keenan while the suit was pending.

In upholding the law, the 2nd District Court of Appeal distinguished it from the "Son of Sam" law, named after the serial killer whose murder case led to its passage. The Supreme Court said the New York law applied to anyone whose story included admission of a crime, even if no charges had ever been filed.

The appellate court said the California law, by contrast, applies only to people who have been convicted of a felony, or acquitted by reason of insanity, and only to stories about their crimes, not to any story that makes a "passing mention" of the crime.

But Keenan's lawyer, Stephen Rohde, said in court papers that the law was "a constitutionally impermissible content-based regulation of protected expression." He also said the law failed to define a "passing mention" and left open the possibility that someone who briefly mentioned a youthful crime in an autobiography could not profit from the book.

The case is Keenan vs. Superior Court, S080284.