Court Opinion

ID: 9498196
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:10:41.881379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:40.246722
License: Public Domain

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Dr. Steven Hatfill’s defamation complaint alleges at bottom that four columns written by columnist Nicholas Kristof and published in the New York Times during the period from July to August 2002 accused Dr. Hatfill of being the anthrax murderer. The essential question therefore is whether these columns, taken together or individually, may fairly be read to accuse Dr. Hatfill of the murders. Because I can find nothing in the letter or spirit of the columns that amounts to such an accusation, I would affirm.
The columns, when read fairly, send the message:
*338(1) that the FBI’s investigation of the anthrax murders was lackadaisical and unimaginative;
(2) that the FBI should have begun pursuing obvious leads that created suspicion about Dr. Hatfill and that, based on circumstantial evidence, Dr. Hatfill should have been the leading suspect; and
(3) that, while there was circumstantial evidence pointing to Dr. Hatfill, no “traditional physical evidence linking him to the attacks” existed and that there “must [have been] a genuine assumption that he [was] an innocent man caught in a nightmare.” Nicholas Kristof, The Anthrax Files, N.Y. Times, Aug. 13, 2002, at A19.
These points were amplified by examples of suspicious circumstances, but nowhere does any column accuse Dr. Hatfill of committing the murders. The columns’ purpose was to put into operation prosecu-torial machinery that would determine whether Dr. Hatfill committed the crimes and “end this unseemly limbo by either exculpating Dr. Hatfill or arresting him.” Id.
We, of course, must accept at this stage of the case the allegations that Kristofs columns contained some factual inaccuracies. But whether Kristofs descriptions of the various items of circumstantial evidence were accurate is irrelevant because (1) inaccurately reporting the suspicious circumstances surrounding a suspect does not amount to inaccurately accusing — either expressly or impliedly — the suspect of actually committing the crime, and (2) historical circumstances recounted in the columns and not disputed by Dr. Hatfill were sufficient to support the columns’ stated suspicion about him. Reporting suspicion of criminal conduct — even elaborately and sometimes inaccurately- — does not amount to an accusation of criminal conduct as necessary to support Dr. Hatfill’s claim.
Thus, I agree with the district court that the columns did not, under Virginia law, “impute to [Dr. Hatfill] the commission of some criminal offense involving moral turpitude.” Carwile v. Richmond Newspapers, Inc., 196 Va. 1, 82 S.E.2d 588, 591 (1954). Similarly, I agree with the district court that the statements in Kristofs columns were insufficiently outrageous to support Dr. Hatfill’s claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress. See Womack v. Eldridge, 215 Va. 338, 210 S.E.2d 145, 148 (1974). Accordingly, I would affirm the district court’s order dismissing the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).