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Michael Schwern v. Noirin Plunkett

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Michael Schwern, prominent Perl developer and keynote speaker at the National Center for Women & Information Technology's 2013 summit, was arrested in Portland, Oregon on Sept 19, 2013 on two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence charges against his then-spouse Nóirín Plunkett -- specifically, harassment and strangulation. The arrest coincides with the day the couple filed for divorce (also Sept 19, 2013). Schwern was previously known in the Open Source community for giving public talks about diversity.

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Michael Schwern, prominent Perl developer and keynote speaker at the National Center for Women & Information Technology's 2013 summit, was arrested in Portland, Oregon on Sept 19, 2013 on two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence charges against his then-spouse Nóirín Plunkett -- specifically, harassment and strangulation. The arrest coincides with the day the couple filed for divorce (also Sept 19, 2013). Schwern was previously known in the Open Source community for giving public talks about diversity. Two feminist organizations issued public repudiations of Schwern, the former Ada Initiative and Geek Feminism. Stumptown Syndicate, which runs various geek events in Portland, citing community safety and well-being concerns, barred Schwern from their events until further notice. According to court documents from Feb 20, 2014, Plunkett testified that "after speaking with police and prosecutors... I told the prosecutors I did not want to proceed with a criminal case." Reviewing the case, the Multnomah County District Attorney's office declined to charge Schwern with a crime. On Sept 24, 2013, Schwern's attorney, Bear Wilner-Nugent, published a press release claiming that Schwern had been "exonerated". This claim was patently false, as exoneration can only occur after a person has been convicted of a crime. Schwern was neither tried nor convicted. Wilner-Nugent subsequently took to twitter and threatened several people with defamation lawsuits for their statements about Schwern's arrest (example: [1] [2]). He deleted most of these tweets shortly thereafter, claiming "they had been read and thus done their job".