Judge Sentences Spammer to Nine Years
In the first criminal prosecution under Virginia’s tough anti-spam law, Jeremy Jaynes, a/k/a Gavin Stubberfield, has been sentenced to nine (9) years in prison.
The case was filed just two weeks after the effective date of the 2003 expansion of Virginia’s law and came about due to the massive amounts of spam sent by Mr. Jaynes to America OnLine. Since America OnLine’s mail servers were situated in Virginia, they claimed jurisdiction. The rest, as they say, is history.
Mr. Jaynes, through his attorneys, have never disputed being a spammer. Instead his claims are, alternately:
- The Virginia statute violates the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.
- The Virginia statute violates the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution.
- As a non-resident of Virginia he should not have been prosecuted a mere two weeks after the statute expanded to include criminal penalties.
Of the three claims, the third one makes the most sense to me. Being so quick on the trigger might just run this particular prosecution afoul of the “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice” standards that Courts apply in jurisdictional disputes. I would not be surprised to find this case overturned by an appeals court on just that ground.
Which is not to say that I would agree with such a ruling. The fact is that the Virginia statute had been on the books since 1999. It just had not included criminal penalties. Plus there were extensive news reports published all over the Internet as the expansion moved closer to becoming law. I do not think that it would be fair to say that there was no way that Jaynes would be expected to know about the law, just that he thought there would be no way that he’d be prosecuted under it.
MickC @ April 8, 2005