Of course it would. Broke ass Freeman against the Post's army of lawyers who will drag it out for years, hiding behind source confidentiality, and possibly being made to print a correction/retraction on their back page some day.
Lawyers take easy cases on contingency all the time, and this would be an easy case if they were actually lying. So the fact that he's broke isn't actually an impediment. And source confidentiality? There's no source confidentiality here. They're claiming the contents of
court documents. For a case that
he himself was involved in. That's VERY easy to produce
in court. There's nothing for them to hide behind. And as I said already, this would defamation pro se, so we're talking actual monetary damages, not just a retraction.
You know what
is an impediment to him winning such a case, or even a lawyer taking such a case? If the story is true.
Also, do you have a direct line to Freeman or his attorneys? Do you know if he hasn't settled the matter with them for a quickie check and a NDA?
If there was a retraction of the story, I could believe that maybe the matter was settled confidentially. But there's no retraction. Which is a pretty damn good indicator that there's no settlement. You're not going to get a settlement without a retraction, that's the easiest part of the whole thing.
This would be easy to prove: the claim is that these are public court records. Why are they not simply posted? Surprise, surprise, because they don't exist.
Or because they don't actually post all court records online. A lot of public records you can only obtain copies of if you pay to have the records reproduced.
Ohio provides an inmate search database. Why isn't Freeman's alleged one year stretch recorded?
"This site displays data on those offenders who are currently incarcerated in an Ohio prison, currently under Department supervision, or judicially released."
Their search database doesn't list past inmates/parolees, only current ones. And he's not a current inmate/parolee.