Look From The "son Of Sam" Bill Criminals Freedom Of Expression

Criminals who have committed criminal acts may obtain a high level of socialpopularity at the same time. Although their notorious acts are despised by the public, thepublishers smell a business opportunity for the curiosity. They take advantage of “socialpopularity” to publish criminal memoirs books or screenplay adaptation, and thecriminals are given a lot of profit as a reward. However, this unfair phenomenon bringsharms to the victims of crime, and therefore arouses the attention of the judiciary. TheNew York State of the United States took the lead in the introduction of the bill named“Son of Sam Law”, which hoped to control and manage criminal profits forcibly byadministrative decree. But this act has caused a lot of questions and thinking, whichmainly stay in the debate over the freedom of expression of the criminals.On the domestic research over the freedom of expression of the criminals whosepersonal liberties are limited and political rights are deprived, although we don’t havesuch law like “Son of Sam Law” to control criminals to get profits from writing crimememoirs, there are some provisions in the Criminal Law that expand the concept ofpolitical rights. The scope of political rights defined by these provisions is contrary tothe provisions of the Constitution and the legislators’ intent, and the criminals’ freedomof expression is infringed. This issue is worthy of attention and discussion.This essay introduces the legislative background and the follow-up developmentof “Son of Sam Law”. Through this introduction, analyze the interpretation of the lawon the freedom of speech, the evaluation criteria of the freedom of speech, the freedomof speech of criminals, and the distribution model of the profits in the United States. Onthe basis of the above discussion, the essay explains why“Son of Sam Law” isunconstitutional and hard to be applied from the perspective of theory and procedure.The writer believes that the freedom of expression is a human right, and even thecriminals shall enjoy this right. Although there were reasonable excuses to formulate“Son of Sam Law”, it was finally sentenced to be unconstitutional for the reason that itsuppressed the freedom of expression and therefore needed to be critically reviewed. InChina, this problem has always been ignored both in the field of legislative and judicialareas, but it shall be paid more attention. This article makes a research on “Son of SamLaw” from several aspects including the criminals’ right to get profits from publication,the legal basis for this right, how to deal with the relation between this right and itspossible harms to the victims, social reliefs and our domestic reality. By means of thisresearch, the writer hopes to give some thoughts to the area of the criminals’ freedom ofspeech in our county, which is quite blank currently.