Activists and dissidents may well anticipate persecution around the world, but today housewives, students and even tourists in Egypt and Thailand have become the target of prosecutions for as little as posting a video or responding to a private message on social media.
This fall Governor Chafee said he could not go ahead with the plan because federal prosecutors had warned him that dispensaries could be targets of prosecution.
Mr. Silchenko has long been viewed as the most likely target of a prosecution.
The target of the prosecution is Dr. Thomas Butler, 61, who has conducted research in Tanzania aimed at finding better antibiotic treatments for plague.
The suit had been brought last year by a former executive at the insurance broker Marsh & McLennan, who was the target of a prosecution by Mr. Spitzer when he was the state attorney general.
Milton McGregor, a multimillionaire casino operator and prodigious political donor who was the chief target of the prosecution, was found not guilty on three counts and faced a hung jury on 14 others, including a conspiracy charge.
Also today, the defense filed a separate motion seeking to compel the government to provide various material, including Energy Department counterespionage training videos, that Dr. Lee contends will show that he was a target of selective prosecution, and that "ethnic Chinese" workers had been the subject of racial profiling by federal counterintelligence investigators.
The suits, one in federal court seeking at least $60 million, and another in New York state court for at least $30 million, were filed on behalf of two insurance brokers who were the target of a prosecution by Mr. Spitzer when he was the attorney general of New York.
It was the latest turn in a whirlwind 48 hours for Durst, who went from the subject of a stranger-than-fiction documentary about his life to being the target of a prosecution that he may have initiated by choosing to speak to documentary filmmakers.
