Strickland v. Sony

Strickland v. Sony was a court case that focused on whether violent video games played a role in Devin Moore's first-degree murder/shooting of three people in a police station. In August 2005, attorney Jack Thompson filed the lawsuit against Sony. This case has been part of the debate over to what extent violent video games play a part in real-life violence.

Devin Moore was convicted in 2005 for the 2003 murder of two police officers and a police dispatcher as he was being detained for allegedly stealing a car. He grabbed one officer's .45 caliber pistol and killed all three before fleeing the station in a police cruiser he stole from the station. He was eventually caught and sentenced to death by lethal injection.

In March 2005, Thompson announced he was filing a lawsuit on behalf of the families of two of the three victims in Fayette, Alabama. He was also featured in a 60 Minutes special on the case.^[1]

On November 1, 2005, Thompson sent an email to various websites commenting on the opening day of the civil trial. In it, he compared Sony and Take-Two Interactive's sale of the Grand Theft Auto video game to Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. According to Thompson, certain regional governments in Japan had prevented the sale of the Grand Theft Auto games to minors, though Sony continued to sell the game where its sale was not restricted in Japan and abroad (Microsoft is doing the same for its own video game console). Thompson also compared the distribution of violent games to the distribution of pornography.^[2]

On November 4, 2005, Sony's defense team submitted a motion to have Thompson removed from the case, stating that Thompson would "turn the courtroom into a circus".^[3] On November 7, 2005, Thompson withdrew from the case.^[4] On November 9, 2005, the video game designer Warren Spector lashed out at Thompson for taking his comments out of context, saying "Take two or three things, from different contexts, mash them together and you can mislead people pretty dramatically."^[5]

On March 29, 2006, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld Judge James Moore's ruling against the dismissal of the case. Law firm Blank Rome, representing the defendants, had previously attempted unsuccessfully to have the suit dismissed during the pre-trial since it argued that the defendants had a right under the First Amendment to sell mature games to minors. At the time of the sale, there was no law preventing such a sale. Thompson called the ruling "exciting" because "no one has ever before survived a motion to dismiss." At the same time, the Alabama Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments as to whether the Fayette County Court had the jurisdiction to preside over the case at all.^[6]

On July 29, 2009, the court granted summary judgement to Take-Two.^[7]

Devin Moore was apprehended several hours after the shootings in Mississippi. According to the Associated Press, after his recapture he said, "Life is a video game. Everybody's got to die sometime." Once in custody, Moore quickly confessed. He told detectives that he shot the men because he didn't want to go to jail.^[8]

Moore faced trial in 2005 and pleaded not guilty.^[9] The trial judge barred the defense from introducing evidence to the jury that Grand Theft Auto incited Moore's shooting spree. Moore's attorney, Jim Standridge, contended that Moore was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder at the time of the crimes. Standridge argued that Moore had been emotionally and physically abused by his father as a child.^[10]

In August 2005, Moore was convicted as charged. On October 9, 2005, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Jim Standridge appealed the case. On February 17, 2012, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Moore's conviction in a 5-0 decision.^[11]

On November 18, 2005, Judge Moore rejected Thompson's request to withdraw, and instead revoked his pro hac vice admission (a temporary license to practice in a given jurisdiction), in an 18-page decision.^[12] Thompson claimed the judge had "absolutely no authority" in preventing him from withdrawing from the case, and that therefore the court's decision to kick him off the case was a "legal nullity". He accused the court of punishing him for "aggressively telling the truth" while it "looked the other way when Blank Rome elegantly told those lies."^[13]

Judge Moore also referred this matter to the Alabama State Bar for "appropriate action", remarking, among other things that "Mr. Thompson's actions before this Court suggest that he is unable to conduct himself in a manner befitting practice in this state."^[14]

Thompson alluded that the "fixer" was local lawyer Clatus Junkin, although Junkin denied he had any influence over any judges, or that he had made such a comment, as he was "not that dumb [...] or foolish enough to imply that [he] could [influence Judge Moore]." He also declined Thompson's request to join the plaintiffs' team, citing disagreements over Thompson's demands of complete control of any contact with the news media. Judge Moore noted that even though he had banned comments on the case outside the courtroom, Thompson had issued seven different communications between the start of the case and the day he revoked Thompson's pro hac vice.^[15] After being thrown off the case, Thompson requested that Judge Moore recuse himself from the case. Moore ignored him, stating "I can't consider it because he's no longer practicing in the state of Alabama. If some other lawyer in the case asks me to recuse myself, I'll consider it in court."^[16] Judge Moore forbade Thompson from "[communicating] with the court or the judge" or he "would be held in contempt of court."^[17]

• Boston Globe – "Ala. appeal in game-blame killings nixed" Archived July 9, 2009, at the Wayback Machine