1 http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A418869585/OVIC?u=los42754&xid=77e9cc23.↩
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Social Media Threatening
I thought that this was a pretty interesting topic that is covered by my Supreme Court case that we are writing papers on in small group. To summarize what is happening in the case, a man recently got divorced from his wife and she took the kids AND he got fired from his job at the amusement park. Pretty much his life is going to crap and then he takes his "rapping" career to Facebook and posts some lyrics. The issue is that what he posted was thought to be threatening to his family and he got arrested for it. Obviously, it is a federal crime for threatening someone. Mr. Rapper backed it up by saying he had no intent to threaten the people and that it was a joke. The Supreme Court didn't buy it and he ended up getting 44 months in jail. The Supreme Court said that if the victims feel that it was directed towards them in a threatening manner and the victims are in a reasonable mind then it is justified. One judge put it this way, "There is nothing absurd about punishing an individual who, with knowledge of the words he uses and their ordinary meaning in context, makes a threat," Justice Thomas said. "For instance, a high school student who sends a letter to his principal stating that he will massacre his classmates with a machine gun, even if he intended the letter as a joke, cannot fairly be described as engaging in innocent conduct." 1 This shows the Supreme Court's view on the matter and it seems valid. My only question would be if the person who would be the victim in this case really doesn't believe it was written with threatening or malicious intent, could they still get away with charging the defendant with the crime? The way it looks is that in this scenario, the victim has a lot of responsibility to tell the truth and not much of a way to tell if they actually feel the way that they do. I am curious to see what y'all say about this.
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That's the unfortunate thing about things like these. You don't know if the victim is lying, so, you need to look at the context. Like the Justice said, under normal circumstances, this could be viewed as a threat. What the victim says makes sense given that context, so we sorta have to believe her.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is you really can't joke about these things, if you do you are basically asking for trouble. The fact is that if it looks like you're putting someone in danger by what you say, then people must take action against you so that everyone is safe, no matter if it was a joke.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tommy's statement that you cant really joke about threats. You cannot joke about killing people over social media because that can be taken literal and you will be prosecuted for it. Your first amendments stands until the court feels that you have threatened someones life.
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