Judge Jeffrey Minehart sues Kermit Gosnell Documentary filmmakers over ’emotional and psychological harm’
Judge Jeffrey Minehart, the judge in the abortionist Kermit Gosnell trial, is now suing the husband and wife documentary filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer over their book, Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer. McElhinney and McAleer are also finishing a movie based on their book.
Minehart claims the work inflicted emotional and psychological harm. He is seeking monetary compensation and attempting to stop the sales of the book and the release of the movie, Gosnell: America’s Biggest Serial Killer.
Kermit Gosnell
The judge says he has been slandered by McElhinney and McAleer’s book, specifically that the book portrays him as soft on crime, the book says Minehart was a “drinking buddy” of Gosnell’s lawyer, Jack McMahon, that Minehart’s selection as the trial judge was a concern to prosecutors and that banned cameras from the courtroom.
Minehart countered every single claim, stating that his “impeccable reputation has been irreparably damaged,” and as a direct result he has suffered emotional and psychological harm.
He accuses the authors of “acting in reckless disregard and purposeful disregard of the truth, and thus with actual malice.”
Also named in the lawsuit are the book’s publisher, the Salem Radio Group, and conservative radio stations that gave the book promotional attention.
For a judge to sue critics is “extremely unusual,” according to M. Kelly Tillery of the Pepper Hamilton law firm. First of all, judges are supposed to be “above the fray.”
Secondly, judges are public figures and therefore the legal standard for success is very high.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1964 (New York Times v. Sullivan) that for public figures to be defamed they must prove conscious malice “knowing the information is false,” or prove a “reckless disregard of the truth.” Tillery says those legal standards are “incredibly hard to reach.”
Investigating FBI agents called Gosnell’s abortion business a “House of Horrors” for its unsanitary conditions, untrained personnel, and grizzly practice of freezing aborted babies.
Gosnell was convicted in 2013 not only of illegal late-term abortions and of involuntary manslaughter in the killing of adult patient Karnamaya Mongar but of first-degree murder for three of the countless infants that were born alive before he “snipped” their spinal columns at the neck.
He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Photo/Nodar Kherkheulidze via wikimedia commons
