Paul Boyne Found Guilty on All 18 Counts for Blog Posts Targeting Connecticut Judges

The jury in New Haven found Paul Boyne guilty on all 18 counts on Tuesday. The charges were felony stalking and electronic stalking tied to blog posts about three Connecticut Superior Court judges.

Boyne is 64. He once lived in Glastonbury and later in Springfield, Virginia. The jury convicted him on twelve counts of first-degree stalking and six counts of electronic stalking. Each judge accounted for six charges — Jane K. Grossman, Elizabeth J. Stewart, and former Judge Thomas G. Moukawsher. 

All three presided over family court cases.

Judge Peter L. Brown presided at the trial.

Judge Brown remanded Boyne to custody when the verdict came in. He had been free on bail.

His bond had run from $1.5 million down to $7,000 during the pretrial years. He had already done 18 months in custody during the pendency of the case.

The state had offered him a plea deal. Plead to a misdemeanor with a sentence of time served. Boyne said no.

What the Evidence Showed

The prosecutors showed the jury the computer evidence. The posts named the judges, described their homes and listed addresses and cars. They mentioned rifles and calibers. One post about Judge Jane Grossman said she was “begging for a .308 shot to the head thru two panes of window glass from an oath keeper concealed in the woods behind her house.” Another post from July 2022 listed her address on MacArthur Drive in Hamden and described her 2018 Audi A4 Quattro. It also published the car’s VIN.

Some of the posts were antisemitic. Boyne used the term “JEW-dicial” and wrote that Connecticut’s family courts were part of a Jewish conspiracy.

The state charged the case as a hate crime. Prosecutors argued that the posts targeted the judges in part because of their actual or perceived religion. Under Connecticut law, that finding raises first-degree stalking from a Class D felony to a Class C felony. The penalty can be up to 10 years for each count.

If the judge ordered every sentence to run consecutively, Boyne could face 180 years in prison. That is unlikely. But it shows how much discretion the sentencing judge holds.

What Judge Grossman Said

Judge Grossman spent two days on the stand. On a weekend in January 2021, a colleague telephoned to tell her there was a post about her. She read it.

“I froze,” she told the jury.

The post correctly described her property. Behind her house, there are woods. The rear of the house is largely glass — a sunroom faces the trees. When she finished reading, she testified that she and her husband went outside and walked the perimeter to see if anyone had been there. After that, she said she stopped using the sunroom for a long time.

She said that Hamden police drove past the house regularly. Judicial marshals came and assessed the security. She installed cameras. She adjusted the alarm. She altered the routes she drove to work. She told her father — a man in his eighties — not to mention to strangers what his daughter did for a living.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Todd Bussert directed her attention to her written decision in the Tiberi family court case. Grossman had included a footnote describing the blog as containing “racist, homophobic, and antisemitic tirades” and noting that “the legal commentary is sophomoric and riddled with profanity.”

Bussert asked her whether “sophomoric” was a synonym for “threatening.” She said it was not. He asked whether the word “threatening” appeared anywhere in her written description of the blog. She said it did not.

On redirect, prosecutor John Doyle asked Grossman whether she considered the .308 post to be criticism.

“No,” she said. “I think that’s a death threat.”

Grossman is half-Jewish — her father is Jewish, her mother Catholic — and does not practice. She testified that the antisemitic language directed at her made her feel threatened. When Doyle asked her what Zionism means, she answered: “I think that’s hate for Jews; the goal to eradicate all the Jewish people.”

Zionism is the movement for Jewish self-determination and the establishment of a Jewish state.

The Defense Argument

The defense had a Supreme Court case. Counterman v. Colorado, decided in 2023. It said the state must prove the speaker himself knew his words would be taken as real threats. Not that a reasonable person would find them threatening. They had a second case—Watts v. United States, 1969. A man had said at a protest that if he were drafted, he would put President Johnson in his rifle sights. The Supreme Court said that it was not a threat. It was political speech. That was the argument. Two cases. Fifty-four years apart.

Bussert argued that Boyne never sent the posts to the judges or traveled to Connecticut, and no one harmed any judge, though the posts were online for years. He argued the language — .308 calibers, “kill shots,” references to mobs of mothers — was the kind of rhetorical excess the First Amendment is designed to protect when directed at public officials.

The state countered that repeating the conduct over years and across dozens of posts constituted a sustained course of conduct designed to intimidate.

The jury deliberated and returned guilty verdicts on all 18 counts.

Background

Boyne’s grievance with Connecticut’s family courts originated in his 2007 divorce. Judge Gerard Adelman presided over his custody case. Boyne’s parental rights were terminated, and he lost all contact with his children. 

He believed the outcome was not justice but a system — evaluators, guardians, lawyers, and judges operating as a coordinated enterprise that monetized family destruction and called it the best interests of the child.

Accounting for time already served, Boyne’s age, and the absence of any violence, his sentence may fall somewhere between probation with time served and an additional five to ten years, with the hate crime enhancement and the number of counts pulling toward the higher end.

Sentencing is May 26.

See also: Paul Boyne Spent 18 Months in Jail for Blog Posts. His Trial Starts This Week.

When Judges Let Thin Skin Undermine Justice

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

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