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After Anthony Elonis's wife left him, he began to write graphically violent rap lyrics and post them to his Facebook account. In several posts, he fantasized about murdering his estranged wife. Others contained violent thoughts about the workplace from which he had been fired, his former co-workers, and an FBI agent who had investigated the matter. In one post, he even talked about massacring a local kindergarten class.
The decision? Intent to threaten must be demonstrated in order to convict for the criminal offense of "transmission of threats in interstate commerce". The court did not rule on whether or not "recklessness" would be sufficient.
The 7-2 ruling reversed the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and "narrowed the circumstances under which individuals can be convicted of making criminal threats under federal law when they post statements on social media like Facebook."
On Monday, the Supreme Court handed Elonis a victory by overturning his conviction. At the same time, however, the Court declined his invitation to issue a broad ruling on First Amendment grounds. Instead, the majority took a minimalist approach, deciding no more than was absolutely necessary to dispose of the case before it.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by mendax on Monday June 08 2015, @04:50PM
I rejoiced when I read about this SCOTUS case. It applies some sense of reason to cases like this. Freedom of speech is so very important that the government should err on the side of caution. Just because a man raps about his fantasies of killing and disemboweling his ex-wife does not mean that he actually is meaning to do it, or that these are intended to be threats.
As a person who keeps a diary, I'm also somewhat relieved by this because I write about my little hatreds, frustrations, and fantasies about death and destruction in order to keep sane. If for some reason I wrote a memoir in which I published some of what I wrote in those diaries, I would not want them to be misinterpreted as threats. When I divorced my ex-wife, I had all sorts of anger and hatred toward her and the "other" man, and if I were a rapper, I'd probably have rapped about them and how I wished I'd see them dead, how I'd like to plaster huge blow-ups of the porno pictures I had of her all over her apartment complex. But as it happened, I was able to ditch the anger and I burned the pictures.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @04:58PM
Just because a man raps about his fantasies of killing and disemboweling his ex-wife does not mean that he actually is meaning to do it, or that these are intended to be threats.
The converse is also true. Just because he's rapping doesn't mean he is not threatening her.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @05:30PM
I burned the pictures.
That is the real crime here, and we are all the victims. Unless she was fat. Was she fat? How fat?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:06PM
I burned the pictures.
That is the real crime here
No, this is SoylentNews. The real crime would be if mendax didn't have off-site backups.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @08:30PM
Three pieces of advice:
1. Keep your diary on an encrypted partition of your hard drive.
2. Keep your diary on an encrypted partition of your hard drive.
3. Use a good password for the encrypted partition of your hard drive.