Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells the True Story of Murder by the Book
The case was this: Lawrence Horn hired a contract killer to execute his ex-wife and severely brain-damaged son. On March 3, 1992, the man he hired, an inexperienced killer named James Perry, used a book called Hit Man — billed by the publisher as “A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors” — as a blueprint for the murders; following to the letter the book’s explicit instructions on how to make the killings look like a burglary gone wrong and how to keep from leaving forensic evidence at the scene. To Horn and Perry it seemed like Hit Man was all they needed to create the perfect murder. They were wrong. The copy of Hit Man found in James Perry’s possession actually helped the prosecution lock up Horn for life and send Perry to death row.
But the Hit Man case was not closed. The victim’s families shocked the nation by filing an unprecedented wrongful death suit against Paladin Press, the publisher of Hit Man — a suit that seemed to defy the First Amendment itself. Although it went against his abiding belief in freedom of the press, Rod Smolla took the case, likening the book to “a loaded pistol or a vial of poison.” Deliberate Intent is the dramatic story of the legal battle that followed.
Deliberate Intent is a book about a lawsuit about a book about murder. The latter book, Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, is precisely what it claims to be: a step-by-step DIY guide to freelance assassination. Few people read Hit Man; even fewer took it seriously. Ex-con James Perry did both, and when Lawrence Horn hired the felonious entrepreneur to do a little job for him, Perry followed the book’s instructions to the letter, executing his client’s ex-wife and brain-damaged son along with the boy’s nurse. After the murderous co-conspirators were convicted and sent to prison, the families of the victims filed a wrongful-death suit against the book’s publisher for aiding and abetting triple homicide.
Authored by a member of the plaintiffs’ team of lawyers, Deliberate Intent is an atypical nonfiction legal thriller. Rod Smolla has not reconstructed his role in Rice v. Paladin Enterprises, Inc. to spotlight his valiant determination and legal genius; instead, he offers uncommonly candid insight into his struggle to reconcile the First Amendment’s protection of free speech with the sixth commandment’s proscription against murder. A respected scholar of constitutional law, Smolla was understandably reluctant to take on a case with potentially damaging consequences for the Bill of Rights–and willingly admits there were times when he questioned if he was on the right side of the fight. Words don’t kill people, after all; assassins kill people. Literacy is hardly a prerequisite. Eventually, however, Smolla decides, “A publisher who provides detailed information on techniques of violent crime with the deliberate intent that some readers will use the information to murder and maim will not find refuge in the First Amendment.” (In May 1999, just before the case was to go to jury trial, Paladin reached an out-of-court agreement with the victims’ families. As part of the settlement, Paladin withdrew Hit Man from the market.) –Tim Hogan
Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells the True Story of Murder by the Book