The Supreme Court threw out the conviction of a man charged for making violent threats on Facebook on Monday, June 1, saying the government must “do more” than prove that a reasonable person would find the postings threatening.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said it was not enough for prosecutors to show that the online comments would make a reasonable person feel threatened. The conviction, he said, would have held up if the jury found Anthony Douglas Elonis from Freemansburg, eastern Pennsylvania, aware of his threatening behavior or understanding that it would be seen that way.
The high court sent the case back to the lower court without clarifying exactly what the standard of proof should be.
Elonis posted about killing his ex-wife, federal law enforcement officials, and even a kindergarten class, but said the writings were “similar to rap lyrics” and not meant to indicate his true intentions.
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.”
Elonis claimed the government had no right to prosecute him if he didn’t actually intend his comments to be threatening to others, and that his posts were a form of therapy that allowed him to cope with the breakup of his marriage and job loss at an amusement park. He argued that his “rap-lyric Facebook rants,” under the pseudonym “Tone Dougie,” were protected by the First Amendment.
The government, however, said it didn’t matter what Elonis intended. They argued that the comments provoked “enough fear and anxiety” to terrify someone, and that in itself was enough to prosecute it as a crime.
Seven justices on the high court agreed that it was not necessary to reach First Amendment issues in reversing Elonis’ conviction.
“The jury was instructed that the government need prove only that a reasonable person would regard Elonis’s communications as threats, and that was error,” Justice Roberts wrote. “Federal criminal liability generally does not turn solely on the results of an act without considering the defendant’s mental state. It is not necessary to consider any First Amendment issues.”
Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter, saying he would have found Elonis’ posts to be “true threats” under the objective standard accepted by the vast majority of appeals courts before Monday’s ruling.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not endorse the majority’s reasoning. Alito said he would have made clear that a person can violate the law if he disregards the risk that comments will be interpreted as a threat.
During oral arguments in the case, it seemed that justices agreed there was a need for more than the “reasonable person” standard, but there was no consensus on exactly what it should be. Thomas and Alito complained that the ruling was an admission a majority “simply could not decide.”
“It is emphatically the prerogative of this court to say only what the law is not,” Alito said. “[The court’s decision is] certain to cause confusion and serious problems…Did the jury need to find that Elonis had the purpose of conveying a true threat? Was it enough if he knew that his words conveyed such a threat?”
The ruling was a narrow victory some civil liberties groups that had urged the court to make it tougher to convict people who make crude comments on social media that could be seen as threatening.
Elonis served three years of a 44-month sentence before being released from prison.
The US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit upheld the conviction, saying Elonis’s subjective intent with his postings did not matter. His attorney said he is confident Elonis will be vindicated after lower courts reconsider his case, possibly at a new trial.
“We’re pleased that the Supreme Court saw case for what it was: A criminal conviction for a ‘crime’ of speech based on only a showing of negligence,” the attorney, John Elwood, said.
The Justice Department says 63 people were indicted on federal charges of making illegal threats in the 2013 fiscal year, up from 53 cases the previous year.
(With reports from The Associated Press and Washington Post)
