Did You Know That in Oklahoma You Can Be Charged With a Felony for Writing a Fictional Story?
After the Columbine incident in Colorado, Oklahoma passed a new law against planning or carrying out that kind of violent event. Unfortunately, the law — hastily constructed and passed in a knee-jerk reaction to public fears — is quite vague and over-broad, and doesn’t even require the state to prove criminal intent to convict someone of felonious conduct. In fact, the law is so wide open to interpretation that it could even allow a person to be convicted of a felony simply for having violent thoughts or imagining and writing stories about violent incidents.
This may sound like a scary scenario involving mythical “thought police” or conjuring dark images from George Orwell’s 1984, but it’s something which at least one person — Brian Robertson — is already facing in our very real United States. Brian was charged with a felony for writing a story as an 18 year old high school student. No violent acts were commited or intended, but merely writing the story could saddle him with a possible criminal record, and his family is enduring financial hardships in the year-long effort to defend him from this charge.
Read his story at http://www.savebrian.org/ and see how you can help.