A Ruling Against a Man Arrested for a COVID-19 Joke Highlights the Influence of a Pernicious Analogy
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A Federal Judge Compared Waylon Bailey’s Facebook Jest to ‘Falsely Shouting Fire in a Theatre’ Back in March 2020, a dozen or so sheriff’s deputies wearing bulletproof vests descended upon Waylon Bailey’s home in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, with their guns drawn, ordered him onto his knees with his hands on his head, and arrested him for a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The SWATstyle raid was provoked by a Facebook post in which Bailey had made a zombiethemed joke about COVID19.