A college student who publishes an online newsletter called "The Howling Pig" last week obtained a court order enjoining prosecutors from charging him with libeling a professor at the University of Northern Colorado. Prof. Junius Peake complained to police after Thomas Mink spoofed him in the newsletter.

But the injunctive relief is not all that Mink and his ACLU attorneys are seeking. They  also want U.S. District Court Judge Lewis T. Babcock to declare the criminal libel statute unconstitutional. Mink v. Dominguez, 1:04cv00023.

"There is no legitimate place for a criminal libel statute in a free society," says Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Northern Colorado.

Colorado is one of 17 states that still has such an antiquated statute. It criminalizes statements "tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead, or to impeach the honesty, integrity, virtue, or reputation or expose the natural defects of one who is alive."

In 1991, the state Supreme Court found the law was invalid in cases involving public figures, but that it could still be used to penalize "libelous attacks where one private person has disparaged the reputation of another private individual." People v. Ryan, 806 P.2d 935.

In a penetrating dissent, Justice Joseph R. Quinn found the law unconstitutional because it does not require prosecutors to prove a statement is false. That deficiency, he said,

will inexorably induce silence as an alternative to avoiding entrapment in the amorphous and uncertain zone of criminality created by the statute.

Mink's lawyers, in effect, are following Quinn's lead. "Someone could be convicted [of libel] for publishing a true statement," Silverstein says. "We maintain that falsity should be an element of the crime."

Mink sparked Prof. Peake's complaint by listing "Mr. Junius Puke" as the purported editor-in-chief of "The Howling Pig" and publishing a column attributed to "Professor Puke." A status conference in the case is scheduled Jan. 20 in Denver.

Elsewhere, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that a member of the Walker River Paiute Indian Tribe is facing criminal libel charges under tribal law. Patty Hicks could get six months in jail for criticizing a tribal official in an e-mail.