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, Interesting) by Covalent on Monday June 08 2015, @03:01PM
I learned this when I was a kid. Just because he added "on a computer" to this old idea doesn't make his speech any more harmful.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 08 2015, @03:20PM
Pre-internet, people did all kinds of violent fantasies on paper and talk about it, but none of it ever left the home. Unless there were a case of "unexplainable" violent rage. And still that is likely to be statistically insignificant enough to bother a policy change. The only thing that really changed were group dynamics due contact and that people has to deal with reality without the, ignorance is a bliss.
Though when lack of empathy and presence of previous criminal activity (rule breaking), violence and guns are present. It's time to carefully watch that individual. Drugs, medication and and polarized views may fuel a probability for something to happen too.
He's just likely to be pissed of and getting an outlet for it on paper (or in bitmaps). Time to move on to more important cases.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:46PM
> Pre-internet, people did all kinds of violent fantasies on paper and talk about it, but none of it ever left the home.
And if it did leave the house, like in a letter sent to the victim or stuck under her car's windshield wiper, it then became a problem. The guy made these posts explicitly public.
Besides that, your entire analysis has nothing to do with the case. The case was not about whether the threats were private or public, it was about the standard required to decide if they are threats. The over-turned standard was one based on perception of the recipient, the court said that the standard must be intent.
However, this guy is not exonerated, his case has been remanded to a lower court to apply the intent standard. He's going to lose that case because his intent was pretty clear, the "oh its just rap lyrics" is a fig leaf that won't stand. It's no different from school-yard bully tactics of making a threat and then saying "only joking!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:53PM
And if it did leave the house, like in a letter sent to the victim or stuck under her car's windshield wiper, it then became a problem. The guy made these posts explicitly public.
Which actually makes it more dangerous for him if anything ever happens to her.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:25PM
Yes, he made them public. Very unlike a letter sent to the victim or stuck under her car's windshield wiper. The latter is obviously a threat directed towards a specific person; the former is more likely just someone venting to their friends.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:49PM
> Very unlike a letter sent to the victim or stuck under her car's windshield wiper.
Not identical, but also not the same as "just venting to friends." Especially when the author knows that his wife is in the circle of people most likely to see the threats.
The very fact that he explicitly included disclaimers about just exercising his first ammenmdnet rights in the threats makes it quite clear he was trying to have his cake and eat it too since no one includes such a disclaimer in something they know isn't threatening.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 08 2015, @03:38PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/opinion/rap-lyrics-on-trial.html [nytimes.com]
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2012/07/rap_lyrics_on_trial_hiphop_scrutinized_in_court.html [theroot.com]
http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/rap-lyrics-evidence-is-it-a-crime-rhyme.htm [criminaldefenselawyer.com]
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/lawyer-student-wrote-rap-lyrics-not-terror-threat [firstamendmentcenter.org]
http://ammori.org/2013/06/01/true-threats-free-speech-and-government-trust-the-case-of-cameron-dambrosio/ [ammori.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 08 2015, @03:46PM
I get what you're trying to say, but threats without the intent to follow through on can sure seem like serious threats to other people. Which can seriously affect people's ability to live their lives.
Kids might not have learned that yet, but if an adult threatens someone, they should expect to be held accountable for it.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:54PM
> threats without the intent to follow through on can sure seem like serious threats to other people.
This case isn't about intent to follow through, it is about intent to threaten. The SCOTUS ruled that intent to threaten is required, not whether the victim felt threatened. He would have been convicted under the SCOTUS standard too, its just that the original court used the more lax standard. His case is going to be retried and he'll be convicted again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:58PM
His case is going to be retried and he'll be convicted again.
How could it be retried at this point?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @04:03PM
Superior courts remand cases all the time. This is not double jeopardy because he was not acquitted, the conviction was just reversed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:55PM
The idea that words can't hurt is fucking stupid and obviously false. Words can and do hurt. Psychological abuse is a very real thing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:34PM
To be honest, this should never have even gone to court. If you haul this guy in, you can haul in ice-t (cop killer), slim shady(pretty much everything), wu-tang clan (ain't nuthin to fuck with).
The list goes on and on, apparently this guys "crime" is not having enough money to speak his mind.
Everyone involved in his prosecution must live in another reality, because in this one it's extremely a black and white free speech issue with no middle ground.
Maybe they can throw the cuffs on stephen king next.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:49PM
To be honest, this should never have even gone to court. If you haul this guy in, you can haul in ice-t (cop killer), slim shady(pretty much everything), wu-tang clan (ain't nuthin to fuck with).
None of those people made references to explicit people in their lyrics. FBI agent interviews him and then he writes about wanting to kill "little agent lady." His wife gets a protective order and then he posts that a protective order isn't think enough to stop a bullet.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday June 08 2015, @04:22PM
None of those people made references to explicit people in their lyrics.
Orly? Clearly you are not an Eminem fan.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/kim-lyrics-eminem.html [metrolyrics.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @04:31PM
Or self consistent. "Little agent lady" is not a specific person.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @04:35PM
> Or self consistent. "Little agent lady" is not a specific person.
Given the context it absolutely was. People are more than just their names.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday June 08 2015, @06:54PM
Its difficult to take seriously any threats which involve the constant use of Bugs-Bunny sound-effects in the background, as Eminem's music does. Of course the only exceptions to the rule are songs when he's whining about his mommy issues, which make him a lot less scary. Eminem may be rapping about how many people he wants to kill but then again Elmer Fudd wanted to kill Bugs Bunny. There is much more frightening and credibly threatening music out there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @07:01PM
Plus Eminem and other rappers who are public figures and professional entertainers are very unlikely to be rapping about some crime that they actually intend to commit. Some nobody who works 9 to 5 in a normal job rapping about dismembering someone who they perceive as wronged them probably has a pretty good chance of intending to commit the act and/or the target of the rapping probably has a reasonable belief that they may be harmed. Comparing this to professional entertainers is a really bad and flawed comparison.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @07:42PM
Some nobody who works 9 to 5 in a normal job rapping about dismembering someone who they perceive as wronged them probably has a pretty good chance of intending to commit the act and/or the target of the rapping probably has a reasonable belief that they may be harmed.
And you've determined that this is true for this specific individual how? The legal system deals with individuals, or should.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @08:18PM
History and empirical evidence leads one to this. Of all the famous, professional rappers I can think of only Slick Rick who actually committed some crimes close to what he was rapping about. (Of course, there's Suge Knight, but he's a producer.) Cool C in the 90s killed a police officer, but he didn't rap about that. I remember some rapper named Murder C who ironically murdered a guy, but he wasn't famous or that successful. I digress. The major point is, a professional rapper's main goal is to make a living, entertaining. That often means painting a picture in order to entertain, much like an actor acts. Someone who works at bank or shoe store who isn't in the business of entertaining who raps about killing someone close to them may be attempting to entertain, but they're in dangerous territory, and they're infringing on the rights of someone else, unless you enjoy having someone you know well rapping about murdering you in awful ways.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @06:56PM
Riiiiiiight. Are you obtuse or a lawyer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @07:10PM
> Orly? Clearly you are not an Eminem fan
You are definitely correct. And if he had sent a copy of those lyrics to his wife after a big fight or after she got a restraining order on him then that would be pretty clear proof of intent to threaten her. But as far as I can tell that didn't happen.
(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.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @05:51PM
i suppose the decision was correct ... for a world made up of robots.
i think it points to a deeper problem in society.
this guy needs help .. but is there a law for that? should there be one?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @06:28PM
This guy doesn't need anything.
I can write all kinds of twisted stuff, and it's meaningless.
It is part of our abilities as humans, to snuff that is to be a robot, not the other way around.