Do Online Death Threats Count as Free Speech?

[boston bean]

Exhibit 12 in the government’s case against Anthony Elonis is a screenshot of a Facebook post he wrote in October 2010, five months after his wife, Tara, left him. His name appears in the site’s familiar blue, followed by words that made Tara fear for her life: ‘'If I only knew then what I know now . . . I would have smothered your ass with a pillow. Dumped your body in the back seat. Dropped you off in Toad Creek and made it look like a rape and murder.'’

snip....

A jury convicted Elonis, and he spent more than three years in prison. On December 1, the Supreme Court will hear Elonis’s First Amendment challenge to his conviction — the first time the justices have considered limits for speech on social media. For decades, the court has essentially said that ‘'true threats'’ are an exception to the rule against criminalizing speech. These threats do not have to be carried out — or even be intended to be carried out — to be considered harmful. Bans against threats may be enacted, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in 2003, to protect people ‘'from the fear of violence'’ and ‘'from the disruption that fear engenders.'’ Current legal thinking is that threats do damage on their own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/magazine/do-online-death-threats-count-as-free-speech.html?_r=0

The above is the title of the article and small snippets of the article to give you the gist. Please read the entire article for further info...

I do not believe that online death threats are free speech. We'll see what the SCOTUS does..... I don't hold much hope for them to make the right decision... but still I hope they will.

[bluestateguy]

1. Years ago I received 2 e-mailed death threats

The police refused to take the matter seriously. They only reluctantly let me file a report. The threateners were never found, or looked for.

[Wella]

2. I'm wondering if this case could hinge on a verb tense

Elonis used the conditional: if. It's a contrary to fact clause, set in a past that didn't happen. One thinks of threats being in the present and future tenses.

Whether a threat is made online or in person, it is still a threat. If Elonis had said, "I am going to kill you", that is a threat and needs to be acted upon whether it's online or in person. But the conditional? I wonder. Elonis could simply argue that he was blowing off steam and didn't mean harm. (Not that the internet is any place to blow off steam, but still...)

[uppityperson]

3. a death threat is a death threat, imo

[olddots]

4. some would think the net is just thinking out loud

There were no regulations set up because there are many in the world that think business can do no wrong .

[Prophet 451]

5. No, absolutely not

Issuing (death) threats is not covered by the First in the meatworld and it shouldn't be online either. It might be difficult to enforce (contrary to fiction, most ISPs assign dynamic IPs that change whenever you log on).

That said, this SCOTUS will do whatever they think will annoy liberals most.

[Takket]

6. what would happen to this guy if...

he said those exact words to the pilot of a commercial airliner because he was upset over turbulence......

he'd be in prison. and there would not even be a debate about.

saying it to your ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, etc, is no different.

The only reason why there is a debate about it is because a man said it to a woman.

[hifiguy]

7. Highly doubtful that they do.

"Terroristic threats" are generally against the law and this poses no First Amendment problems, particularly when the threats are specifically directed at an individual. In my state making such threats is a criminal offense. I have no problem with that even though I am as close to being a First Amendment absolutist as anyone can be.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

8. Only if they're completely unbelievable.

If a reasonable person would be certain that the threat was purely figurative, and a literal threat was not intended, it should be protected.

If not, it should not be.

[truebluegreen]

9. Well, if they do rule that online death threats are protected free speech

I've got some saved up for them: lookin' at you, John, Tony, Clarence, Samuel...whenever I think about it I really have to thank our spineless Senators for allowing that scum on the Court. We could have stopped any or all with a filibuster, but noooooo, our guys didn't want to disrupt the collegial nature of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.

[TheKentuckian]

10. Sometimes other times not so much

Ever seen the Seinfeld where FDR uses his birthday wish on Kramer to drop dead? Well, stuff that is essentially "I'll kill you user87541!" cannot rise to the level of threat and has no actual identifiable target is pretty much in the same area of law, no way Kramer could have FDR locked up for a death threat no matter how much either or both believes in it because it is fantasy and the same goes for real life counterparts.

Now does that mean you can't ban the lil fucker from the site or otherwise separate the parties and the host from such a person? No, of course you can you don't have to associate but should they be in a legal process? No.

You have a specific threat to a specific person that can plausibly happen and you have a different kettle of fish.