## Facts

- After a divorce and custody dispute, Christine Belford obtained custody of her children from defendant David Matusiewicz.
- David, assisted by his mother Lenore Matusiewicz, kidnapped the children and took them to Central America; they were later recovered, and David was imprisoned for the kidnapping.
- After David’s release, David, Lenore, and David’s sister Amy Gonzalez allegedly waged a multi-year campaign against Belford, accusing her of child sexual abuse and seeking to harm her reputation.
- The alleged campaign included repeated accusations to authorities and courts, communications to Belford’s school and church, extensive online postings, dissemination of allegations to third parties, and efforts to gather information about Belford and recruit others to surveil her.
- Defendants obtained polygraph examinations purportedly supporting the truthfulness of their abuse allegations and sought additional testing after the government questioned the first exams’ reliability.
- On February 11, 2013, at a scheduled Family Court hearing, David’s father, Thomas Matusiewicz, shot and killed Belford and her friend and then killed himself.
- Federal prosecutors indicted David, Lenore, and Gonzalez for conspiracy and violations of the federal interstate stalking/cyberstalking statute, alleging their conduct from 2009–2013 culminated in Belford’s death.
- The pretrial motions addressed (1) a First Amendment overbreadth/vagueness challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 2261A and (2) admissibility of defendants’ polygraph results.

## Issues

1. Whether 18 U.S.C. § 2261A is unconstitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment, as applied to defendants’ communications and online postings.
2. Whether 18 U.S.C. § 2261A is unconstitutionally vague, including as to terms tied to “substantial emotional distress.”
3. Whether defendants’ polygraph results are admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert, and whether they should be excluded under Rule 403.

## Decision

- The court denied the motion to dismiss the indictment on First Amendment grounds, holding § 2261A was not unconstitutionally overbroad as applied.
- The court rejected the vagueness challenge, holding the statute provided sufficient notice and standards for enforcement in the circumstances presented.
- The court excluded defendants’ polygraph evidence, finding it failed Rule 702/Daubert reliability requirements and, in any event, posed Rule 403 risks of misleading the jury and diverting the trial into collateral disputes.

## Legal Principles

- A First Amendment overbreadth challenge is disfavored and succeeds only when a statute’s unconstitutional applications are substantial relative to its legitimate sweep.
- Speech used as a tool of stalking or harassment may be treated as integral to criminal conduct and is not protected simply because it is communicated by words, including online.
- A stalking/cyberstalking statute with a culpable mental state requirement and an objective component tied to a reasonable person’s reaction can defeat vagueness claims by providing fair notice and limiting arbitrary enforcement.
- Polygraph evidence offered to prove a party-witness’s truthfulness is generally suspect under Rule 702/Daubert due to contested reliability and the risk of substituting for the jury’s credibility determinations.
- Even minimally probative polygraph evidence may be excluded under Rule 403 where it risks confusing or misleading the jury and creating time-consuming litigation over methodology.

## Conclusion

The court allowed the federal stalking and cyberstalking prosecution to proceed by rejecting overbreadth and vagueness challenges to § 2261A, and it barred defendants from introducing polygraph results offered to bolster their credibility, citing reliability and prejudice concerns under the Federal Rules of Evidence.


United States v. Matusiewicz, 155 F. Supp. 3d 482 (D. Del. 2015)