Here is United States v. Popa, a case that set aside as unconstitutional a conviction of one Ion Popa, who made several racist and vulgar calls to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (the chief federal prosecutor in the District).

Like I said - cops and government agents need to be careful with this. From this case and others, it certainly appears the Narberth Police violated this woman's right to free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

Popa can easily be read as holding that speech that's "intend[ed] in part to communicate a political message" is protected from punishment by criminal statute. Other cases have certainly held this.

Popa can also be read as holding that speech is protected from criminal statute when the speaker "intend[ed] to engage in public or political discourse." "Public discourse" is broader than just a "political message". Numerous other cases have also held this.

With the woman in Narberth we have:

1. E-mails to numerous public officials;

2. The e-mails concerned an official matter (even if the matter was untrue and offensive) and so was not a private communication and the emails were sent to publicly published e-mail addresses of public officials in most if not all cases;

3. One can very easily argue that there is a constitutional right to harass, annoy and embarrass a public official (which police officers are) with communications to his or her office, or to an email address, about a matter of public concern. In a way that's just lawful lobbying. Terms "harass" or "intimidate" could also be construed to include such things as legally "threatening" that an official won't be re-elected, or will lose political support;

4. No threat, explicit or implicit, was made against anyone, or even inciting violence by someone else according to the MLL article.

It is constitutionally and legally troubling that the Narberth Police, as public officials, punished speech based merely on the intent of the speaker, and regardless of whether or not it actually bothers anyone. Punishing speech that is merely intending to be embarrassing is very troubling from a constitutional standpoint when it involves public officials.

Finally, the PA harassment statute does not contain a provision saying that the law can't be applied to activity protected by the state or federal constitution. That is also very troubling.

My take is that this is a very weak harassment case that opens Narberth to being hit up with a civil rights lawsuit and that the true legal recourse would have been civil litigation by the harmed cop(s) for defamation.