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.
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.