This Wired article tells the story of Brian Robertson, a creative writer and journalism student. One day at Moore High School (Moore is part of greater Oklahoma City, just north of Norman, and is where both of the big tornadoes of the past four years went through), Brian found a Notepad file containing a paragraph called "evacuation orders" about how to evacuate people in case of disaster. He thought it was interesting and turned it into a short story about an armed assault on his school.

A few months later, other students found the story on the computer and turned it in to school officials. They called the police, and under a 2001 Oklahoma law intended to prevent school shootings that makes it a felony to "plan, attempt, conspire, or endeavor to perform an act of violence" against someone else, he was arrested and charged with a felony.

The key word is "plan," as it turns out, because that criminalizes thought. The DA isn't wild about the law, the judge originally ruled it as "vague" and "overbroad," but a higher court reinstated it and now the kid has to go to trial. In the interim two years he's been kicked out of school, can't hold a job, and of course his family is tens of thousands of dollars in the hole (including $1000 per year just to keep him out on bond). People in Moore are spreading all kinds of rumors that he had planted a bomb (untrue), or had weapons (they searched for weeks and couldn't find anything, nor any of the twenty other people it would take to carry out the plot of the story). Friends who stand up for him are getting fired from their jobs simply for telling the court-documented truth about the case.

All for writing a story. It's unbelievable, and I'm only mildly disturbed that I hadn't even heard about it before now. I drove through Moore yesterday.

I've put up a button in the sidebar that links to the Save Brian site, run by his mother, including a Weblog and ways to offer support. Please click through, and please support how you can (even with a link) - this is horribly important stuff.

This is a criminal case and would put a felony record on the kid for life. The state is happy to see the law tested and perhaps overturned, but to do that, they need a defendant, and that's this kid. If he's convicted but a higher court overturns the law, he'll still spend up to five years in prison. And if he's acquitted, because it's a criminal case, he has no way to recover any of his costs from the state. A state legislator has already told the family that they don't want to amend the law until they see what happens to Brian - at his expense. It's a time to do something.