US v. Kilbride, No. 07-10528

In a prosecution arising from defendants' conduct relating to their business of sending unsolicited email, or spam, advertising adult websites, defendants' electronic mail fraud convictions and sentences are affirmed where: 1) no authority supported defendants' notion that a district court must provide a clear geographic definition of the relevant community in an obscenity prosecution; 2) a national community standard must be applied in regulating obscene speech on the Internet, but the district court's failure to instruct on this standard was not plain error; 3) defendants' as-applied vagueness challenge to the CAN-SPAM Act failed even applying a heightened requirement of clarity; and 4) the district court properly concluded that one defendant's related lawsuit was meritless and amounted to obstruction of justice.

Read US v. Kilbride, No. 07-10528

Appellate Information

Argued and Submitted June 8, 2009

Filed October 28, 2009

Judges

Opinion by Judge B. Fletcher

Counsel

For Appellants:

Gary Jay Kaufman, Dana Milmeister, and Colin Hardacre, The Kaufman Law Group

For Appellee:

Jill Trumbull-Harris and Bonnie L. Kane, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC