ROCKLAND, Maine — The district attorney’s office has dropped criminal charges against a 64-year-old Camden man who was accused of harassing a family on Facebook.
The dismissal of harassment by electronic device and disorderly conduct charges against Charles F. Berry were filed Oct. 28 in Knox County Unified Court.
Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Baroody said Tuesday that when the case was viewed in its totality, the decision was made not to proceed.
Berry’s attorney, Scott Hess, had argued in court filings that the law being used against Berry was overly broad and vague and violated his client’s First Amendment right of free speech.
Berry was arrested in April by Camden police. He has been free on bail since that time and pleaded not guilty to the charges in June.
Berry, who also posts on Facebook under the name Bishop Whitecrow, had been harassing the family for more than three years, according to an affidavit filed in court by Camden police.
The hundreds of comments over the years have been extremely vulgar and obscene, police said. A review of the posts shows references made to using a 12-gauge shotgun and shooting a woman but does not identify the woman.
In fact, Berry did not specifically identify the family members by name in the vast majority of comments he posted on Facebook. But the detective was able to obtain an arrest warrant for Berry based on a photograph of the family Berry posted with his most recent comments, according to the affidavit.
It isn’t clear from the affidavit why Berry was allegedly targeting the family.
Among his posts, Berry reportedly stated that if the government shuts him out of the Internet, he would take to the road and use his CB radio to continue broadcasting his comments. He also made disparaging comments about earlier attempts by police to silence him. Berry also had been charged with harassment in 2012, but that case was dismissed when the district attorney’s office declined to prosecute because Berry had not specified who he was attacking in his posts.