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NYC Dead Sea Scrolls Defendant Sentenced to Jail after Appeal

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Raphael Golb is sentenced Monday to two months in jail and three years probation.
Raphael Golb is sentenced Monday to two months in jail and three years probation.
On Monday July 14th, a man convicted of using digital-age tools to impersonate and malign his father’s academic rivals on the ancient subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls received a two month jail sentence. This was after some of his other convictions were tossed out along with a state aggravated-harassment law, by New York State’s highest court.

Raphael Golb also got three years’ probation. His sentencing came after the Court of Appeals upheld convictions on other charges, including criminal impersonation and forgery. Golb was free on bail during his appeal after receiving an earlier sentence of six months in jail. Golb was suppose to start serving his sentence on July 22nd, but could ask the courts to hold off the jail term while appealing the case further.

Golb denied that he intentionally committed a crime with his online campaign to illuminate what he saw as important information about the scrolls. After he told this to state Supreme Court Justice Laura Ward, he admitted that he did know that it was “inappropriate.”

He said, “I obviously should not have sent out deadpan emails in the names of other individuals and I obviously will never do it again.”

But a prosecutor said Golb “should get exactly what he deserves,” pushing for a year in jail. He engaged in “a malicious course of conduct over many months … to impersonate others and destroy their careers,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney John Bandler said.

This was a unique case from the beginning. It is seldom that Internet imitation lead to criminal trials at all, especially disputes of ancient scrolls’ origins. In May, Golb’s case gained more recognition of distinction when he received an aggravated harassment charge, but Golb called an unconstitutional intrusion on free-speech rights. Golb, a literature scholar and lawyer, acknowledged disguising his identity in emails and blog posts to discredit detractors of his father’s views on the scrolls’ origins.

The scrolls contained the earliest known versions of portions of the Hebrew Bible; scholars’ understanding of the history of Judaism and the beginnings of Christianity has been greatly enhanced by the scrolls, since the 1940s when they were discovered in Israeli caves. The texts were believed by some researchers to have been assembled by a sect known as the Essenes. Other theories, including Golb’s father, historian Norman Golb, say the writings were the work of a range of Jewish groups and communities.

In order to combat adversaries of his father in debates, Raphael Golb used various online aliases. He even created an account in a prominent Judaic studies professor’s name and sent messages to dis credit the professor, by making it appear as though he confessed to plagiarizing Norman Golb’s work.

Raphael Golb said in his defense that his digital banter was satire , not crime.  But the Manhattan district attorney’s office and jurors said the emails and posts amounted to a campaign of offenses including second-degree aggravated harassment. The misdemeanor charge was intending to communicate with someone “in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm.”

Golb’s lawyer, Ronald Kuby, argued that it turned criticism into a crime if the object of the complaint felt irritated, but not necessarily imperiled. “You cannot arrest somebody for being annoying,” Kuby said in a recent interview. “Unwanted communication is not a threat — it is merely unwanted communication.”

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