Son of Sam laws
Son of Sam laws are statutes designed to prevent criminals from profiting financially from the publicity surrounding their crimes, particularly through the sale of books or stories about their actions. Named after the infamous serial killer David Berkowitz, who was dubbed "Son of Sam" after his 1977 spree, these laws emerged in response to concerns that criminals could gain financially from their notoriety. The New York law mandated that any proceeds from such sales be redirected to compensate victims or their families. However, the law faced significant legal challenges, culminating in a 1991 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that deemed it unconstitutional due to its infringement on freedom of speech. The Court recognized the state's legitimate interest in victim compensation but concluded that the law was overly broad and restrictive of expression. Despite the ruling, the debate over how to regulate profits from crime-related narratives continues, with other states attempting similar measures, though these too have faced legal scrutiny. Overall, Son of Sam laws highlight the complex interplay between victims’ rights and the First Amendment in the context of criminal activity.
Subject Terms
Son of Sam laws
Definition: Laws that seek to prevent criminal defendants from profiting from their crimes
Significance: This restriction on the speech of criminal defendants has been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court
In 1977 David Berkowitz committed a series of brutal murders and was ultimately apprehended and found mentally incompetent to stand trial in New York. He became known as Son of Sam, because of conversations he claimed to have had with Sam, his spiritual father. Sam communicated with Berkowitz through the barking of a dog. When the New York legislature discovered that Berkowitz’s notoriety seemed poised to make him rich from the sale of his memoirs, it responded by enacting its Son of Sam law. The law required convicted criminals to turn over the proceeds of any sale of their stories to the state, to be used to compensate the victims of the criminals’ crime. Ironically, although the law was later amended to cover accused as well as convicted criminal defendants, it did not apply to Berkowitz, who, having been declared mentally incompetent, was never convicted of his serial murders. Berkowitz apparently paid his share of royalties from a book about his crimes to his victims or their estates.
In 1991 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of the New York State Crime Victims Board that New York’s law violated the guarantee of freedom of speech by singling out expressive activity for a special burden. Faced with this discrimination against particular speech, the Court found that a law imposing such a discrimination could survive constitutional challenge only if there was a compelling state interest for the law and the law was narrowly tailored to serve that interest. The Court agreed that the state did in fact have a compelling interest in compensating victims of crimes and in seeing that criminals did not profit from their crimes. The Court insisted that New York’s law restricted more speech than necessary, since it could be construed to apply to any works in which the criminal defendant made reference to a crime, no matter how inconsequential the reference might be in the context of the whole work. By the law’s reasoning, Saint Augustine could be prevented from earning royalties on his Confessions (c. 400 c.e.) because he recounts there his childhood crime of stealing pears from a neighbor’s tree.
The ruling against New York’s Son of Sam law has not ended the issue of whether the participants in criminal proceedings can be stripped of profits made as a result of selling the stories of their participation to the highest bidder. California legislators, for example, in the face of enormous publicity surrounding the O. J. Simpson trial, enacted legislation that made it a misdemeanor for jurors or witnesses to receive compensation for providing information relating to a criminal case within specified time periods. A federal district judge declared the law unconstitutional in August, 1995.