Marine’s dad ordered to pay protesters who demonstrated at sons funeral court fees

[bobdina]

Marine’s dad ordered to pay protesters’ court fees
Associated Press
Stars and Stripes online edition, Tuesday, March 30, 2010

BALTIMORE — The father of a Marine killed in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters was ordered to pay the protesters’ appeal costs, his lawyers said Monday.

On Friday, Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered Snyder to pay $16,510 to Fred Phelps. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder’s funeral in 2006.

The two-page decision supplied by attorneys for Albert Snyder of York, Pa., offered no details on how the court came to its decision.

Attorneys also said Snyder is struggling to come up with fees associated with filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision adds “insult to injury,” said Sean Summers, one of Snyder’s lawyers.

The high court agreed to consider whether the protesters’ message is protected by the First Amendment or limited by the competing privacy and religious rights of the mourners.

Associated Press
Stars and Stripes online edition, Tuesday, March 30, 2010

BALTIMORE — The father of a Marine killed in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters was ordered to pay the protesters’ appeal costs, his lawyers said Monday.

On Friday, Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered Snyder to pay $16,510 to Fred Phelps. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder’s funeral in 2006.

The two-page decision supplied by attorneys for Albert Snyder of York, Pa., offered no details on how the court came to its decision.

Attorneys also said Snyder is struggling to come up with fees associated with filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision adds “insult to injury,” said Sean Summers, one of Snyder’s lawyers.

The high court agreed to consider whether the protesters’ message is protected by the First Amendment or limited by the competing privacy and religious rights of the mourners.

[bobdina]

Only in America can people protest a warriors funeral then have the courts say they were violated and they get 12,000. This is total bullshit wants me to bash there heads in commie fucks.

[bobdina]

The more I think about this the more pissed I am. What kind on of an ape demonstrates the funeral were people are there to honor young men/women who have died in service to this nation. Bunch of fucking assholes. I am feeling a deep anger inside me I have not felt in a while, damn scumbags

[nastyleg]

Bob I am there with you but the court should have said ok first amendment rights are upheld but no monitary reward because of right to privacy and expected privacy were not upheld and violated the mourners freedom of religion and peaceful assembly.

[acf6]

This is messed up under NY state law if you interupt a religious service its Disorderly Conduct. This is a huge injustice!!

[Sixx]

Fred Phelps and his wackjob family has been doing this for a long time. I'm surprised he is still alive.
They also know how to work the legal system REAL good.

I'll be glad when they are dead.

[MickDonalds]

Okay umm.....

Let's just hire Tom Cruise's character from Collateral, Mark Wahlberg's character from Shooter, and Liam Neeson's character from Taken and equip them to take out the Westboro Baptist Church Protesters.

I seriously doubt they'll live. I mean, George Tiller (the famous 3rd Trimester Baby Murderer) was assassinated ar church. I wouldn't doubt some down on his luck Iraq/A'stan vet with an intimate knowledge of IED's just takes them out someday.

And I'll wipe my hands and smile when I see it on the news :)

[nastyleg]

Okay umm.....

Let's just hire Tom Cruise's character from Collateral, Mark Wahlberg's character from Shooter, and Liam Neeson's character from Taken and equip them to take out the Westboro Baptist Church Protesters.

I seriously doubt they'll live. I mean, George Tiller (the famous 3rd Trimester Baby Murderer) was assassinated ar church. I wouldn't doubt some down on his luck Iraq/A'stan vet with an intimate knowledge of IED's just takes them out someday.

And I'll wipe my hands and smile when I see it on the news :)

all you need is someone who knows how to make a simple circuit using a garage door infrared beam, or a simple crush device in the dive way. a gallon diesel mixed with some powdered soap and Styrofoam. when added together it will be a sight to see.

[MickDonalds]

That's pretty much everyone here. I'm actually surprised IED's haven't been used in the US yet. So cheap and effecient.

[bobdina]

Washington – A father of a Marine killed in Iraq says he won't pay the legal fees of a protest group who picketed at his son's funeral in 2006 – at least not until he hears from the US Supreme Court on the matter.

Albert Snyder, whose son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, was killed in Iraq, learned Friday that a federal appeals court is requiring him to pay more than $16,000 in legal fees to the Westboro Baptist Church, a Christian fundamentalist group that demonstrates during military funerals to gain attention for its antigovernment, antihomosexual message. The group rallied at Matthew Snyder’s funeral in March 2006 in Westminster, Md., chanting antigay slogans and carrying signs such as “Thank God for dead soldiers,” says Albert Snyder’s attorney, Sean Summers.

The group was protesting about 30 feet from the church’s main entrance, and Mr. Snyder had to enter through a separate entrance, Mr. Summers says.

Snyder subsequently sued the Westboro group for emotional distress and won a $5 million judgment. But on appeal, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, finding in favor of protecting the protesters' free-speech rights. About three weeks ago, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case and is expected to hear it in the fall. (Last year, the high court had declined to take up the issue.) Meanwhile, the circuit court has ordered Snyder, a salesman, to pay the church’s court expenses.

Snyder, of York, Pa., told Fox News on Tuesday that he would not pay the Westboro Baptist Church "until I hear from the Supreme Court."

“It’s fair to say that they are not getting any Christmas cards from Mr. Snyder,” adds Summers, in a phone interview. “He obviously thinks they are despicable and doesn’t understand why they would target him.”

The Westboro group has been protesting at military members’ funerals for years. The church leader, Fred Phelps, preaches that American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. (He was among those banned from Britain last year for fostering hatred or extremism.) The protests have nothing to do with the fallen service members' sexual orientation, and the church says its protests are held within a “lawful distance” of the funerals.

Ultimately, say some, the church protests are a matter of constitutionally protected free speech.

“I really don’t see that [the protest] was a violation of the First Amendment [principles]. It was a violation of decorum and good taste and all sorts of other things, but not a violation of the First Amendment,” says Charles Gittins, a civilian lawyer in Virginia.

But Summers argues that his client’s right to peaceful assembly and freedom of religion were infringed by the protests and that, unlike at a public park where people are free to express themselves, a funeral setting draws a “captive audience” that requires attendees to be in a particular location – they can’t simply walk away.

Westboro Baptist Church, which is based in Kansas, plans to protest in Florida on Wednesday, outside a funeral for a Marine killed in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan on March 22.

“Military funerals have become pagan orgies of idolatrous blasphemy, where they pray to the dunghill gods of Sodom and play taps to a fallen fool,” states a press release posted on the church’s website, announcing the rally at a memorial service for Lance Cpl. Justin Wilson. At the bottom of the press release are printed the words “Thank God for IEDs,” referring to the roadside bombs that have killed thousands of troops in both wars

[nastyleg]

just watched on fox that Bill O'Reilly is willing to pay this guys legal fee's. If you ask me this is not a first amedment right but the guy had resonable right to privacy and the fact that funerals are more of a religious thing then that hateful, disrespectful, ignorant, back woods, inbred, lowlife, cum guzzeling, child raping, horse cock sucking, goat fucking, waste of space, oxygen stealing piece of diahrea eating ass hat was empeading his right to practice the relgious right that is granted by god and protected by the constitution.

[ianstone]

Well guys you have said it all, so, it is an obscene miscarriage of justice, simply sickening.
My respects to the deceased soldiers family.

[MickDonalds]

This Fred Phelps guy won't die of old age, of natural causes.

Somebody WILL murder his ass. It will happen. I just hope whoever does it basically copies a trap from one of the Saw movies and kidnaps him, setting up some crazy copy cat Jigsaw game that results in mass media coverage of a gruesome, aganozingly slow tormentous death.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3zx8F1SHW4"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3zx8F1SHW4

[dmaxx3500]

i think we could get some motorcycle guys[hell's angles] to show up at this ass-hats next protest and help move them away ,this happened to some protesters in California last year and the protesters were found tied to trees after the were pee'd on and left there for 3-4 days ,they haven't been protesting since then

[Sixx]

You see the Phelps family are twisted fucks powered by greed. Started out as Human rights attorneys helping Blacks, Native Americans etc win court cases and lawsuits and all that shit.
Fred gets disbarred from Kansas and and some of his attorney family members get into legal trouble as well.

Fast forward....Present day America changes and it is harder for them to find clients. They devise this plan to become a wacko cult and abuse our Constitution for their own monetary gains by baiting for lawsuits by pissing off the American populace and hoping for violence against them or waiting to sue the police for not providing protection. etc etc etc.




http://www.phelpschartered.com/FirmHistory.htm



You cannot beat these people.
The only way is by death. Start hooking em up with old school car bombs and they will learn.

Oh yeah, They are Democrats too...

[nastyleg]

Democrats what a surprise....hahaha.....well hopefully death will great them all the same

[Pittsburgh]

I wouldn't consider them Democrats. Very much like how I wouldn't consider some of the far-right nutty extremist groups as Republicans. They may vote Democrat, but these scumbags are in a complete league of their own and give everyone's respected party a very bad name.

All in all, they give the whole country a bad name.