The Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of a Pennsylvania man who posted several violent messages on Facebook and was convicted under a federal threat statute. The Court held that the standard used to convict him was too low.
The Court said that it wasn’t enough to convict him based solely on how a reasonable person would regard his communcations as a threat. The Court left open what standard should be used.
The case concerns a Pennsylvania man, Anthony D. Elonis, who posted several violent messages on his social media account after his wife left him. He claimed he was an artist who turned to rap lyrics for therapeutic purposes to help him cope with depression.
Elonis posted these on Facebook:
There’s one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you.
Enough elementary schools in a ten mile radius to initiate the most heinous school shooting ever imagined.
Elonis might not be off the hook, however. The high court’s ruling means his case will be sent back to a lower court to determine whether he meant what he posted or was at least reckless in posting it. If the court rules that his posts were intentionally or recklessly threatening, his conviction would stand.
Full Story @ [CNN]
LibertasIntel 
[…] the federal law against interstate threats. That’s the same statute that was at issue in the Supreme Court’s decision in Elonis v. U.S. last week, in which the Court decided that to be a “true threat” in violation of Section 875, the […]
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