WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will consider the free speech rights of people who use violent or threatening language on Facebook and other electronic media where the speaker’s intent is not always clear.
The court on Monday agreed to take up the case of an eastern Pennsylvania man sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for posting violent online rants against his estranged wife, law enforcement officials and former co-workers.
A federal appeals court rejected Anthony Elonis’ claim that his comments were protected by the First Amendment. He says he never meant to carry out the threats. He claims he was depressed and made the online posts in the form of rap lyrics as a way of venting his frustration after his wife left him.
At his trial, the jury was instructed that Elonis could be found guilty if an objective person could consider his posts to be threatening. Attorneys for Elonis argue that the jury should have been told to apply a subjective standard and decide whether Elonis meant the messages to be understood as threats.
Elonis’s lawyers say a subjective standard is appropriate given the impersonal nature of communication over the Internet, which can lead people to misinterpret messages. They argue that comments intended for a smaller audience can be viewed by others unfamiliar with the context and interpret the statements differently than was intended.
The Obama administration says requiring proof of a subjective threat would undermine the purpose of the federal law prohibiting threats.
The high court said it will consider whether conviction of threatening another person under federal law “requires proof of the defendant’s subjective intent to threaten.”
For more than 40 years, the Supreme Court has said that “true threats” to harm another person are not protected speech under the First Amendment. But the court has cautioned that laws prohibiting threats must not infringe on constitutionally protected speech. That includes “political hyperbole” or “unpleasantly sharp attacks” that fall shy of true threats.
The federal statute targeting threats of violence is likely to be used more often in the coming years “as our speech increasingly migrates from in-person and traditional handwritten communication to digital devices and the Internet,” said Clay Calvert, a law professor at the University of Florida.
Calvert, one of several free speech advocates who submitted a legal brief urging the court to use a subjective standard, said people mistakenly seem to feel that they can get away with more incendiary speech on the Internet, in tweets and in texts.
Elonis’ estranged wife testified at his trial the postings made her fear for her life. One post about his wife said, “There’s one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you. I’m not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts.”
FBI agents visited Elonis at home after the amusement park that fired him contacted law enforcement officials about his posts. After the agents left, Elonis wrote: “Little agent lady stood so close, took all the strength I had not to turn the (woman) ghost. Pull my knife, flick my wrist and slit her throat.”
The case is Elonis v. United States, 13-983.
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[6/16/14, 10:31:19 AM] Kay Steiger: SAM HANANEL, Associated Press
We had all better hope they come down on the side of this guy in the lawsuit, jackass that he was, or expect every single ugly insult or strange idea published electronically to result in hoards of angst-ridden teenagers and angry divorcee’s being hauled off to jail.
The police came to our family’s Father’s Day Dinner yesterday to question my daughter’s 19 year-old boyfriend about “suicidal and terroristic threats” he supposedly made on his blog.
He’s a sweetheart, a gentle, creative and funny English major struggling with his identity like every other 19 year-old, especially since failing enough classes in his first year of college that he’s taking a year off to work. Incidentally, he has suffered from Tourette’s syndome and ADHD his whole life. As a result, his inner thoughts and struggles are often not only deeper and more complex than most, he can eloquently and sometimes brutally write about them.
Someone saw a post he wrote describing the deep feelings of failure he felt after realizing he was not doing well in school. He never said he was suicidal, nor did he say he wanted to harm anyone, but the colorful way he described his train of thoughts during a late-night run in the rain last spring after being dropped from a class for poor grades and of how easy it would be for a weaker person to just jump in front of a car to end it all (which he also noted was a cowardly way to deal with life) was all the cops focused on–not the context of the essay, not the fact that it referred to something that had happened three months ago, and certainly not the fact that he denied, as did we and his parents, any desire to in any way harm himself or others.
After two hours in which 12 police officers alternately interrogated him him (“have you ever felt those urges, son?”) intermittently squinting over their smart phones ("what exactly is a ‘thanatos’?), of me and my husband almost getting arrested for advocating for him too forcefully in our own driveway by demanding they use their frigging brains, I finally raised the issue of the kid’s First Amendment right to free speech.
Only then did the lights seem to come on in their heads, and finally they left us and him alone.
But I worry, will they now follow his writing, will they now try to target him for future harassment?
Well this guy made eloquent death threats not only to his ex wife, but to the police officer who questioned him about those threats. Where exactly free speech is in play here?
The story states he wrote offensive rap lyrics, yet never harmed or actually used the writing to harass or intimidate his ex-wife directly.
Had he done so, that would constitute assault and/or battery. Those are punishable acts.
Thoughts, especially creative thoughts, are not YET a crime in the United States.