People v. Golb is a New York case in which Raphael Golb, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in comparative literature, was convicted for a variety of alleged criminal offenses (specifically identity theft, impersonation, aggravated harassment, forgery, and unauthorized use of a computer) relating to his use of pseudonymous blogs and emails to criticize and ridicule several Dead Sea Scrolls scholars. His conviction was largely reversed on constitutional grounds, but was partially affirmed in a decision that gave rise to controversy among legal scholars and commentators.See People v. Golb, 23 N.Y.3d 455 (2014). Golb later wrote two books about the case in which he reiterated his criticism of the scholars involved and maintained that the case amounted to a criminalization of satire, parody, and academic criticism.See Golb, Raphael. The Qumran Con: A Dead Sea Scrolls Memoir (2024). ; When Speech Becomes a Crime (2025). .
Background
Raphael Golb is the son of the late historian Norman Golb, a professor of Jewish history and civilization at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, a key proponent of the viewpoint that the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran were not the product of the Essenes, a view held by many authorities, including University of North Carolina professor Bart D. Ehrman, Frank Moore Cross of Harvard University and Lawrence Schiffman of New York University. Norman Golb's opposing view held that the scrolls were written elsewhere and moved to Qumran in anticipation of the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem.See , (1996). "There is disagreement among scholars and experts about who wrote the Scrolls. One view, known as the Qumran-Sectarian theory, or Sectarian theory, is that the Scrolls were writings of a Jewish sect, living in or near Qumran. Norman Golb and others disagree with the Qumran-Sectarian theory. They believe that the Scrolls were writings of various groups and that the writings were rescued from libraries in Jerusalem and brought to the caves for safekeeping at the time of the siege and sacking of the city by Roman troops in 70 C.E. (the Jerusalem libraries theory). Professor Golb challenges the Qumran-Sectarian theory as unsupported by any actual evidence." People v. Golb, 23 N.Y.3d 455, 460, 991 N.Y.S.2d 792, 795-96, 15 N.E.3d 805, 808-09 (2014).
In 2008, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences opened a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, and invited Bart Ehrman to lecture on the topic. Raphael Golb then sent a letter from email ID "frank.cross2" signing "Frank Cross" to four scholars at the University of North Carolina, linking to an anonymous blog post by Golb in which he had said that the museum should not have invited Ehrman to speak because he was not a Scrolls expert. The "Frank Cross" email commented, "It looks like Bart has gone and put his foot in his mouth again."23 N.Y.3d at 461-62.
Later in 2008, the Jewish Museum in New York City held a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit and invited Lawrence Schiffman. Golb wrote an article, using the pseudonym "Peter Kaufman", which accused Schiffman of plagiarizing (a "little-known case of apparent academic quackery") some of Norman Golb's ideas. Golb then created the email with ID "larry.schiffman" and used it to send emails to four of Schiffman's students with this message and a citation to the "Kaufman" article:
Golb then sent a similar email message to every member of Schiffman's department at NYU. Next Golb sent emails to the university's Provost and the Dean of Graduate Studies, posing as Schiffman and asking them what he could do to counter the charges of plagiarism that the Kaufman article had raised against him. Golb then sent an email signed "Lawrence Schiffman" to NYU's student newspaper, imploring its staff "not to publish a word" about any plagiarism accusations against him.23 N.Y.3d at 462-63.
Schiffman later testified that he felt "very attacked" by Golb's false emails, "and basically for like a month I couldn't do [any]thing but respond to people's inquiries."
In the fall of 2008, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto held a Scrolls exhibit. Golb sent a letter from email ID "seidel.jonathan" signing "Jonathan Seidel" to the museum's board of trustees, stating:
Golb later sent the board of trustees two follow-up emails (still posing as Jonathan Seidel), urging them to include Professor Golb's ideas in their lecture series. Golb then used the email account with ID "seidel.jonathan" to ask Risa Levitt Kohn, the curator for the Toronto exhibit, whether she was "planning to answer Golb's critique of [her] catalogue."
Finally, Golb sent letters from the "seidel.jonathan" email ID to dozens of Dead Sea Scroll scholars. This time, however, the emails disparaged his father's work. (SA 865–66, 884). Among other things, the emails announced that Norman Golb's "Chicago filth must be answered as quickly as possible, so please let me know if you're willing to help out." Golb signed two of these emails "Jonathan S," and a third as "Jonathan Seidel".23 N.Y.3d at 463-64.
Subsequently, New York prosecutors charged Golb with two counts of identity theft in the second degree, 15 counts of identity theft in the third degree, ten counts of forgery in the third degree, 20 counts of criminal impersonation in the second degree, three counts of aggravated harassment in the second degree, and one count of unauthorized use of a computer. In 2010, a jury of the Supreme Court, New York County, convicted Golb on 30 counts: two counts of identity theft in the second degree; 14 counts of criminal impersonation in the second degree; ten counts of forgery in the third degree; three counts of aggravated harassment in the second degree; and one count of unauthorized use of a computer, and he received a six-month sentence.People v. Golb, 102 A.D.3d 601, 960 N.Y.S.2d 66, 67 (1st Dep't 2013).
2013 ruling of Appellate Division
Golb appealed to the New York intermediate appellate court (the Appellate Division, First Department) and it modified the judgment. Golb's principal defense on appeal was that the emails were intended only to be satiric hoaxes or pranks, and therefore should not be held culpable. The court rejected the argument, denying that Golb's intent could have been parodic, because "parody must convey two simultaneous—and contradictory—messages: that it is the original, but also that it is not the original and is instead a parody." But here Golb only "intended to convey the first message to the readers of the emails, that is, that the purported authors were the actual authors. It was equally clear that defendant intended that the recipients' reliance on this deception would cause harm to the purported authors and benefits to defendant or his father." The court also held, "Nothing in this prosecution, or in the court's jury charge, violated defendant's First Amendment or other constitutional rights."People v. Golb, 102 A.D.3d 601, 601-02, 960 N.Y.S.2d 66, 68 (1st Dep't 2013).
The court refused to interpret the definitions of "injure" or "defraud", as used in the forgery and criminal impersonation statutes, to "tangible harms such as financial harm." It also ruled that the requirement in the statute of "benefit" could be "any gain or advantage" to defendant or "to another person," such as defendant's father. "The fact that the underlying dispute between defendant and his father's rivals was a constitutionally-protected debate does not provide any First Amendment protection for acts that were otherwise unlawful." The court emphasized that the wrongfulness of Golb's conduct was not in the content of what he said but in his use of sock puppetry: "Defendant was not prosecuted for the content of any of the emails, but only for giving the false impression that his victims were the actual authors of the emails."102 A.D.3d at 602-03, 960 N.Y.S.2d at 68.
The Appellate Division overturned the identity theft conviction in the second degree, which was based on the theory that Golb attempted to commit the felony of scheme to defraud in the first degree, which means defrauding someone of $1000 or more in property. The court said that "there was no evidence that defendant intended to defraud one or more persons of property in excess of $1,000 or that he attempted to do so. The People's assertions in this regard rest on speculation."102 A.D.3d at 603, 960 N.Y.S.2d at 69.
2014 ruling of Court of Appeals
Golb appealed to the highest New York court, the Court of Appeals, and in a split decision it further modified the convictions but affirmed them in part. Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam wrote the majority opinion, joined by Judges Victoria A. Graffeo, Susan Phillips Read, Robert S. Smith, Eugene F. Pigott Jr., and Jenny Rivera. Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman dissented in part.People v. Golb, 23 N.Y.3d 455, 991 N.Y.S.2d 792, 15 N.E.3d 805 (2014).
Majority opinion
The counts for criminal impersonation in the second degree
Golb was convicted of 14 counts of criminal impersonation in the second degree. NY Penal Law § 190.25 makes guilty of this crime a person who "impersonates another and does an act in such assumed character with intent to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud another." Golb argued that the trial court's failure to properly limit and define the terms "injure" and "benefit" constituted reversible error because the jury could have interpreted the statute as capturing any benefit or harm. Thus, "when literally anything can be a legally cognizable benefit or harm, one can be found guilty of violating this law if one, for example, simply causes hurt feelings, mocks or criticizes" and "a benefit could be any gain or advantage, no matter how slight." Prior cases, however, applied the statute only to cases that involved monetary fraud or interference with government operations. Golb did not cause any pecuniary loss or interfere with governmental operations, the court said, but his acts did involve injury to reputation, which in academia can be serious, "and we believe the legislature intended that the scope of the statute be broad enough to capture acts intended to cause injury to reputation." Accordingly, the court concluded:
The court emphasized, however, that criminalization depends on intent to cause injury:
The aggravated harassment charge
New York Penal Law § 240.30(1)(a) provides that "[a] person is guilty of aggravated harassment in the second degree when, with intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm another person, he or she ... communicates with a person, anonymously or otherwise, by telephone, by telegraph, or by mail, or by transmitting or delivering any other form of written communication, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm." The court agreed with Golb that this statute is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, and that his conviction of three counts of aggravated harassment related to his conduct toward Schiffman, Goranson and Cargill must therefore be vacated. The court ruled that "any proscription of pure speech must be sharply limited to words which, by their utterance alone, inflict injury or tend naturally to evoke immediate violence."23 N.Y.3d at 466-67, 991 N.Y.S.2d at 800, 15 N.E.3d at 813.
The convictions for forgery in the third degree, identity theft in the second degree, and unauthorized use of a computer
New York Penal Law § 170.05 provides "A person is guilty of forgery in the third degree when, with intent to defraud, deceive or injure another, he falsely makes, completes or alters a written instrument." The court found that there was sufficient evidence to show that defendant deceived people by sending emails from accounts in the names of Schiffman, Seidel and Cross, and accordingly it affirmed his conviction on those counts.23 N.Y.3d at 468, 991 N.Y.S.2d at 801, 15 N.E.3d at 814.