The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out the stalking conviction of a Colorado man who sent hundreds of unwanted Facebook messages to a female musician, ruling that state prosecutors had not shown that he was aware of the "threatening nature" of his statements.
Completely insane ruling. Wild that Kagan went across the aisle for this.
So I guess it’s basically impossible to convict anyone of anything involving speech? If I yell “fire” in a crowded theater, how can you prove I wasn’t having a delusion that there was a fire? Maybe there was an explosion in the movie and I was so immersed I thought it was real!
Dude had previous convictions and spent years doing this harassing, it’s not like this was an isolated mental break. Truly insane.
Yeah, the fact that he sent messages over multiple years, opened various accounts after the artist blocked him, and was actively messaging her about seeing her in public is pretty cut-and-dry stalking. Death threats are damning as well. Sure, he might not be mentally stable, but that shouldn’t give him a pass for reprehensible and dangerous behavior.
Seems like the actual issue was that the law in question would let him be convicted even if he wasn’t doing these things and just being a nuisance. It’s not that he’s innocent, it’s that the law used is itself illegal.
Finally, someone who understands what the SC actually does
To be clear, I do not agree with the ruling, but the ruling was on whether this was a federal or a civil matter. I think the government should strongly prevent clear harassment and reasonable threats of violence, but the supreme court decided that threats or words are not enough in this case. I think it’s particularly two-faced, especially in light of threats of violence being used regularly to prosecute minorities and identify potential terrorists, but threats of violence directed towards a single person in the context of years of harassing behavior and a known pattern of behavior were apparently not enough.
If I had to guess, the court was wary of allowing any potential attacks to the 1st amendment, as they have been want to do in the past - a famous example of this in (somewhat) recent history is when the supreme court held that the 1st amendment was more important than the stolen valor act passed just a few years earlier. The ruling doesn’t particularly surprise me, nor does Kagan swapping sides because in the US we have a strong free speech identity and free speech limitations in terms of harassment has almost never been ruled on (one might make the argument that virginia v. black might be one such case, but that’s a case of racially motivated hate speech which is not quite analogous here).
I am struggling to figure out how anyone could be convicted of stalking under this ruling. Some of his texts even involves death threats!
I would say that he did demonstrate that he was insane, and therefore should be confined to a mental health institution.
But that’s the thing. Are they going to…put him in a mental institution? Because he desperately needs to be in a good one. I would be much more ok with this ruling if he were. I’m getting the sense he’s going back to society where he will behave totally normally from now on.
I sincerely doubt they would just release him to the general population.
That’s not THE thing. That’s A thing that is related, sad, and irrelevant to how the Supreme Court operates.
Fwiw, Colorado is making great sides in redirecting mentally ill from law enforcement toward social services. Tons of room for improvement, but they’re wholly separate things, systemically.
You can demonstrate intent without an admission, and it doesn’t require intent to get a conviction for harassment. Stalking is different.
This guy, given his behavior, should absolutely be in a facility where he can’t do any harm.
However - I have known a few people with Tourette’s over the years, and can absolutely say that mental state and abilities should play a factor in whether or not something that’s done would violate the law.
Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater may not be something someone with tourette’s can control. If that causes a stampede and people get trampled, that’s not their fault, in my opinion.
The point I’m making is that the “fire” is a classic example of speech that isn’t protected in the US, but with this ruling there’s no way to prove intent. So what if I sat down and continued watching the movie afterwards? I just got over the delusion. And someone with tourette’s would probably apologize, try to calm people down, or even avoid a theater altogether. I’m pretty sure that someone with a peanut allergy can’t sue a peanut farm if they go visit and sample the produce; if you know there’s an extra danger for you specifically in performing an activity then you are responsible.
Not to mention tourette’s could never cause targeted, violent, electronic-message based harassment either. This is a focused, intentional action.
In this particular case, I believe the accused should be an inpatient at a mental health facility, especially because of the violent threats that were made. There is no way he should be allowed to walk free and continue doing this to people.
In the case of someone with Tourette’s yelling “Fire! Titties! Fire!” in a crowded theater and causing a stampede - they are still not responsible, nor would they be ruled responsible for any deaths that occur, and that’s 100% correct in my view.
I don’t how it will affect your overall stance, but the “Yelling fire in a crowded theater” (aka, “clear and present danger”) test, which comes from Schenck v. United States, was overturned in 1979 with the case Brandenburg v. Ohio, which gave us the “Imminent Lawless Action” test, instead. This test requires:
Yelling fire in a crowded theater is only illegal if it meets that test-- all three requirements-- on a case by case basis.
Pretty sure tourettes doesn’t make you create four new Facebook accounts
Maybe you overlooked where I said that this guy should be in a facility where he can’t hurt anyone?
In that instance, I would say that they probably should have known the potential risks involved with putting themself in that situation.
So you’re saying that people with disabilities should be excluded from society?
This goes to your point which, hyperbole aside, I think the bar for judging a statement as a threat unless it is unequivocal in its phrasing or the perpetrator literally admits their intent is set impossibly high here. I can’t see how you get a more clear cut situation of where someone ought to understand that their words were causing distress.
In this scenario you literally have the authorities going “what you’re doing is threatening people.” The person then goes on to keep doing that thing, and then somehow successfully fields the defense that “he didn’t understand that it was coming off as threatening.”
So…by their logic, we can’t trust that the Supreme Court’s ruling was made of sound mind, right? I don’t believe this to be a legitimate ruling as we can’t show that they understood the “idiotic nature” of it.
I hope they appeal and use that.
So I’ll defend this ruling.
Quick background: First Amendment protects people from being prosecuted for their speech, but some types of speech are not protected, and can be punished by the government. One of those exceptions is “true threats.” The federal and state governments can punish people for making true threats.
What the Supreme Court ruled: In order to determine whether any particular speech/message is a “true threat,” the court has to determine whether the person making that speech at least “consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence” (or intended to threaten violence). The Colorado courts failed to apply this test properly, and any conviction for threats needs to go through that test, so they’ll need to do it again.
What the Supreme Court did not rule: Whether the communications in this case would pass or fail that test.
On that record, I think it’ll be pretty easy to convict under the new test.
After all, states punish people for theft, murder, robbery, assault, etc., when all of those convictions require proof that the defendant intended to cause that harm. Same with reckless driving and stuff like that: prosecutors know how to prove defendants’ states of mind, and do it all the time.
Seems like the ruling was correct. Colorado’s law seems too easy to convict.
Threats have to have intent. I agree this case the defendant was likely guilty of making threats. But the SCOTUS was overturning the case on the grounds of the Colorado law. Not judging the defendant specifically. At least that’s how the above poster’s excerpts from Kagan’s decision and the 2 dissents from Barrett and Thomas read.
What’s wild is that she didn’t cross the aisle. The 3 left leaning judges and 4 of the right leaning judges were sided in the majority.
Barrett and Thomas objected.