University of Utah Professor’s Antagonist Wins Right to New Trial

Aaron Heineman, who is deaf, was a student at Utah Valley University when he sent three emails “espousing white supremacist ideology” to a professor at the University of Utah in 2010 and 2011.
A White supremacist convicted of sending a hate-filled email to a professor has won the right to a new trial on First Amendment grounds.

The 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the conviction of Aaron Heineman, whose email user name was “siegheil_necon,” was Constitutionally flawed because the trial judge didn’t determine whether Heineman intended the email to be threatening.

Heineman, who is deaf, was a student at Utah Valley University when he sent three emails “espousing white supremacist ideology” to a professor at the University of Utah in 2010 and 2011, according to the decision. The first two messages contained no threats but the third “made the professor fear for his safety and the safety of his family,” the court said.

Titled “Poem,” it called the professor by his first name and began this way:

“Come the time of the new revolution,

we will convene to detain you.

And slay you, by a (B)owie knife shoved into the skull from your pig chin