Blame Canada indeed. Grow a sense of humour up there, hosers.Do Online Death Threats Count as Free Speech?
But advocates for civil liberties want to give more breathing room to free speech and don’t think the question of whether a statement online qualifies as a threat should be ‘'in the eye or ear of the beholder,'’ the A.C.L.U. and other groups put in a brief they filed in the Elonis case. ‘'Words are slippery things, and one person’s opprobrium may be another’s threat.'’ In a case that worries free-speech activists, a teenager named Justin Carter got into a Facebook exchange and wrote, ‘'I think I’ma SHOOT UP A KINDERGARTEN.'’ After someone in Canada alerted the police, he spent months in a Texas jail for that comment and is still facing charges. ‘'I wasn’t trying to scare anyone, I was trying to be witty and sarcastic,'’ he wrote to the judge. ‘'I failed, and I was arrested.'’
If the SCOTUS decides threats don't count as free & unfettered speech, someone's going to pay. (Probably tax-payers, for a Federal Public Defender, but maybe more than one someone will pay in blood. Take that as you will, forces of repression.)
3 comments:
What, me worry?
‘'I think I’ma SHOOT UP A KINDERGARTEN.'’
‘'I wasn’t trying to scare anyone, I was trying to be witty and sarcastic,'’
Yeah, that's real Algonquin Round Table material.
The entire system stinks from one end to another. The simple solution would be to repeal all drug ordinances, make civil forfeiture illegal, get rid of the RICO statutes, most of the anti-terrorism statutes and mandate that plea bargains are illegal and all criminals must have a trial. The fact that the current system cannot run if a trial is necessary is the point, too many things are crimes which should not be.
If you really want to make the system work, make all private lawyers for criminal charges illegal, and use only public defenders, chosen by lot. I guarantee that the pay and competence of public defenders would soar and their case load would drop as soon as rich people realized that they could be the one being defended by an overworked and underpaid lawyer.
- Ian Welsh
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