Charges dropped in Muslim pamphlet case

By Chris Dumond
Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: April 25, 2008

CHARLOTTE COURT HOUSE — Seventeen months after the president of the Lynchburg-based Christian Action Network was accused of air dropping pamphlets on a Muslim compound, the matter was thrown out of court Thursday on a technicality.

Martin Mawyer, of Forest, was charged with dumping, a misdemeanor. The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office says he used a plane to drop about 50 pamphlets over Charlotte County on Nov. 8, 2006.

After a 10-minute ruling by Charlotte County General District Court Judge Joel Cunningham on free speech issues raised by Mawyer’s lawyer, Commonwealth’s Attorney Bill Green dropped the charge when a problem with the arrest warrant was discovered.

On the summons served to Mawyer, his name is second to the Christian Action Network as an entity. On the summons on record with the court, he is named as an individual.

“I do think you have a substantial problem with due process,” Cunningham told Green.

Cunningham allowed Green to drop the charge rather than outright dismissing it, telling the prosecutor he could not go forward with a warrant that was never served to the defendant.

Ordinarily, said David Haskins, Mawyer’s lawyer, that would allow Green to file the charge again. In this case, though, more than a year has passed and the statute of limitations has expired.

“That’s technically true,” Green said. “But I’m not 100 percent sure.”

According to court records, the pamphlets allegedly dropped by Mawyer criticized the naming of Sheikh Gilani Lane, a Charlotte County road near Red House leading to a 45-acre Muslim compound.

Gilani, a Pakistani cleric, founded Muslims of the Americas in the early 1980s. According to court records, the pamphlets accused Gilani of being a terrorist.

The property owners involved in the case left the courthouse Thursday, escorted by a sheriff’s deputy, without offering comment.

Although the charges were dropped, the judge had plenty to say about the dumping and free-speech objections raised by Mawyer.

Cunningham said Mawyer’s alleged dumping was not only legally different than the protected free speech of distributing pamphlets in the town square, but that common sense should have told him it was wrong.

“You cannot fly over someone’s house and dump numerous pieces of paper,” the judge said.