BOSTON, Feb. 18 - A jury ordered The Boston Herald on Friday to pay $2.09 million to a Superior Court judge, ruling that it libeled him in articles that accused him of making disparaging comments about crime victims.
The jury found that The Herald and its reporter David Wedge had libeled Judge Ernest B. Murphy with a series of 17 articles and columns starting in February 2002.
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The first article was a front-page piece that said Judge Murphy, then assigned to a court in New Bedford, was a "wrist-slapping" judge who had "heartlessly demeaned victims" and had said of one young rape victim: "She's 14. She got raped. Tell her to get over it."
That comment, which The Herald said the judge made in a closed-door meeting with prosecutors, prompted a frenzy of news coverage and calls for Judge Murphy's removal from his position. Some columnists and commentators began calling him Easy Ernie or Evil Ernie.
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Because Judge Murphy is a public figure, the jury had to find that the newspaper acted with "actual malice" or "a reckless disregard for the truth." The jury considered 61 statements, most of which appeared in articles in The Herald, though 5 were made by Mr. Wedge on the Fox News cable television talk show "The O'Reilly Factor."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/19/national/19herald.html
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