A Stone-Solid Legal Right

For 15 years or more, crime victims and their families have brought lawsuits seeking to hold filmmakers or television networks liable for copycat crimes--acts of violence possibly inspired by violence on the screen. Each of those lawsuits ultimately failed, and for good reason. The 1st Amendment’s guarantee of free speech is properly broad, and the Supreme Court has permitted restrictions only when speech is intended to incite or produce lawless action.

So it is disappointing that the court ruled Monday that a lawsuit against director Oliver Stone for his film “Natural Born Killers” can go forward. Stone, Time Warner and others involved in making the 1994 movie were sued by the relatives of Patsy Byers, a convenience store clerk in rural Louisiana who was shot and seriously wounded in March 1995. She died later of cancer.

Testimony at trial brought out that the shooter and her accomplice had watched a videotape of Stone’s movie time and again before shooting Byers. They subsequently committed a killing and were convicted.

The high court Monday rejected appeals for dismissal by Stone and the other defendants and instead cleared the way for lawyers for Byers’ relatives to depose witnesses and seek other evidence to bolster their case.

Stone, personally provocative, is surely a tempting target. His movies, including “Platoon” and “Natural Born Killers,” are unabashed in their depiction of bloody, senseless violence. Stone himself does not shrink from the message they send. But to hold him and those associated with him legally responsible for the acts that others commit makes about as much sense as excusing a murder defendant on the ground that his mental capacity was diminished because he ate too many Twinkies: It’s absurd on its face.