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Teenage League of Legends Player Jailed For Months For Facebook Joke
Kohath writes "Eighteen-year-old Justin Carter of Austin, Texas was arguing with a friend on Facebook about League of Legends back in February. After being called 'insane,' he responded with 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts.' Below that, he wrote 'lol' and 'jk.' He was arrested March 27, 2013 and has been in jail since that time. A hearing to review his case is scheduled for July 1, 2013. His parents have launched a change.org petition to convince the authorities to release their son."
In case anyone wonders what crime he could be accused of with those words, from the article: "Authorities charged him with making a terrorist threat. If convicted, he will face eight years in prison."
I also found this bit from the article hilarious: "“Justin was the kind of kid who didn’t read the newspaper,” said [father] Jack Carter. “He didn’t watch television. He wasn’t aware of current events. These kids, they don’t realize what they’re doing. They don’t understand the implications. They don’t understand.”
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Can we take them away just because he is a teenager?
We have the drinking age and driving age totally backwards in this country.
You cited the wrong section. This is what you should have cited: imminent lawless action. There are three parts of the test:
intent, imminence, and likelihood.
If you say "Jews should be killed", it doesn't imply imminence. If you say "Let's go put some Jews in gas chambers", it doesn't have likelihood. And if you say "It would be funny if y'all went and lynched a Jew" it wouldn't have intent.
For the Facebook post, it didn't have likelihood or any real intent (it was a joke). The imminence of it could be argued. In any case, it fails the test and his speech is protected.
For once I actually RTFA, because I couldn't think of a crime this kid could have been charged with. He is charged with "making a terroristic threat."
Then I wondered what that means, feeling a bit surprised that this kid's actions could be interpreted as a terroristic threat (though, I think we can all agree that sometimes summaries on /. and descriptions in news can be innaccurate, which may very well be the case here), so I found this summary of the common elements of the crime of "making a terroristic threat":
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/making-a-terrorist-threat.html
Basically, my conclusion is that, yes, we should all be afraid--This is getting into "thought crime" territory.