Black Lives Matter

Do you know anything else about this nitwit? That he's been jailed before?

http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/freedoms/faq.aspx?id=12996

How do courts determine whether speech is a true threat?
The Supreme Court has ruled that true threats receive no First Amendment protection.1 Unfortunately, the Court has not clearly defined a test for determining what types of speech constitute a true threat.2 As a result, the lower courts have adopted a variety of tests to determine whether speech constitutes a true threat.

Some courts have determined that "if a reasonable person would foresee that an objective rational recipient of the statement would interpret its language to constitute a serious expression . . . [then] the message conveys a 'true threat.'"3

Other courts consider a series of factors in determining whether speech constitutes a true threat, including (1) the reaction of the recipient of the speech; (2) whether the threat was conditional; (3) whether the speaker communicated the speech directly to the recipient; (4) whether the speaker had made similar statements in the past; and (5) whether the recipient had reason to believe the speaker could engage in violence.4

The Louisiana Supreme Court, for example, ruled that a student could face criminal charges for saying that it would be easy to shoot students he didn't like and that he was going to blow up the school.5 The state high court noted that the student made the comments only five days after the Columbine tragedy, and emphasized "the climate of fear already surrounding the school."6

However, a California appeals court recently ruled that a student could not be criminally charged under an antithreat law for turning in a painting depicting extreme violence against a peace officer who, a month earlier, had cited the student for drug possession.7

The state appeals court noted that "a painting -- even a graphically violent painting -- is necessarily ambiguous."8 The appeals court also noted that the student never showed the painting to the peace officer, but simply turned in the painting as a class project.

Many cases regarding true threats made by students are just now circulating through the state and federal courts. Consequently, school officials are advised to seek legal counsel in this evolving area of the law.

Notes
1 Watts v. U.S., 394 U.S. 705 (1969).

2 Rothman, J. E. (2001). Freedom of Speech and True Threats. Harv. J. L. & P.P., 25, 283, 288 ("Even though the Supreme Court has made clear that true threats are punishable, it has not clearly defined what speech constitutes a true threat.").

3 U.S. v. Miller, 115 F.3d 361 (6th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 883 (1997).

4 See Jones v. State of Arkansas, 64 S.W.3d 728, 735 (Ark. 2002) (determining that a student giving his rap song threatening violence to another student was a true threat).

5 State ex rel. R.T., 781 So.2d 1239 (La. 2001).

6 Id. at 1247.

7 In re Ryan D., Case No. C035092, 2002 Cal. App. LEXIS 4453 (Cal. App. 3rd Dist., July 30, 2002).

8 Id. at *16.

http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/freedoms/faq.aspx?id=12996

For instance, what about statements that allegedly threaten unspecified members of a vast group of people — such as police officers generally, or abortion providers, or capitalists, or Jews or blacks or gays or any other large group? (Recall that, in this very case, “I’ve got enough explosives to take care of the State Police and the Sheriff’s Department” was one of the statements that was found to be threatening.) Those are not uncommon in talk about public issues, and I think that they are probably not specific enough to be punishable threats — though query whether in this case there were some contextual reasons to think that Elonis was referring to a particular state police or sheriff’s department building, and whether that should matter. But in any event the Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t opine on the subject.

8. Now it might be that the Court had to leave a good deal unresolved here. Perhaps the Justices couldn’t settle on a majority opinion on the recklessness vs. knowledge question, or on the First Amendment issue, which might explain why such a narrow opinion took six months to release. And there are arguments in favor of the Court deciding as little as possible in most cases, especially constitutional cases. But in any event, it appears that this is an unusually narrow decision.

Congratulations to our coblogger John Elwood, who represented Elonis before the Supreme Court, on winning the case; and please see Orin’s post for more thoughts on the matter.

His being stupid adds icing to the cake, TonyRM.

I love our Bill of Rights, why don't you?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/04/30/first_amendment_rights_at_stake_in_wis_political_speech_case_126439.html


On the night of October 18, 2007, Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio ordered his Special Enforcement Unit to arrest Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, the owners of The Phoenix New Times, a small, freely distributed newspaper that had published Arpaio’s home address as part of a story about his commercial real estate holdings. The nominal crime was the violation of an obscure state statute that criminalized the publishing of personal information about a police officer if there was “an imminent threat” against that officer.

This was a ruse; Sheriff Arpaio’s address was publicly available from numerous other outlets and Arpaio -- once dubbed the toughest sheriff in America -- had no evidence he was threatened. The real reason for the arrest, one that further court proceedings confirmed, was that the paper had published numerous articles over two years critical of Arpaio and his supporters in the county attorney’s office.

Thankfully in this case, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the victims to sue. The right to speak freely without fear of retaliation by prosecutors won the day and Maricopa County was forced to pay a $3.75 million settlement for the abuses.

But not all courts have been willing to stand up to those in power who use their position in the government to intimidate and silence.

Unhappy with Gov. Scott Walker’s political and policy victories in 2010, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm launched an investigation of nearly every conservative organization that supported Walker’s reforms. The extraordinarily broad “John Doe” investigation, complete with pre-dawn armed police raids and gag orders preventing the targets from speaking publicly about the case, was purportedly meant to find violations of campaign finance statutes -- theoretical coordination between these organizations, created to voice their political beliefs, and Governor Walker’s campaign. Not a single judge has agreed with any of these theories. In fact, the state’s attorney general and election-law regulator both repudiated them.

As in Arizona, this premise was little more than a ploy. Chisholm, according to a fellow prosecutor, “felt it was his personal duty to stop Walker,” and any means were apparently justifiable to reach these ends. This included investigations on the thinnest of pretexts meant to intimidate groups and individuals from speaking out, along with attacks on those that did in order to send a message to all groups that free speech was no longer protected in Wisconsin. Even if an investigation was justified, there is no justification for such heavy-handed and dangerous methods.

Unless the Supreme Court takes their case, known as O’Keefe v. Chisholm, the victims of these bullying tactics, and others in the future, will never get their day in court.

In the meantime, we should all decry these brutish governmental attacks on critics, which pose an enormous threat to First Amendment rights. Journalists, in particular, should rally behind these conservative speakers in Wisconsin -- at its core, this case is about the First Amendment -- and as the case in Arizona shows, when government officials are prepared to violate that most sacred constitutional protection, no one, whether part of the press or not, is immune.

We should all speak out now, before the police begin pounding on the door at 3 a.m.

Sorry but no one who love the bill of rights would be so very eager to disregard it for people you do not like.

A good example of those who love the bill or rights are the Jewish ACLU lawyers who defend the rights of the American Nazis party.

No one should be arrested only as a mean of police and government harassment of people they do not like with special note of when that harassment interfere with constitutional rights.