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Teenage League of Legends Player Jailed For Months For Facebook Joke

Posted by Soulskill on from the a-very-unwise-joke dept.

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."

27 of 743 comments (clear)

  1. So much for... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...freedom of speech.

    He wasn't actually making a direct threat at any place or thing...just shooting off his mouth.

    Sad that you can be arrested for just a general saying of something.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:So much for... by ganjadude · · Score: 5, Insightful

      thought crimes?? I mean seriously everyone knows that if you are going to do something stupid like that, you dont post about it, you dont joke about it, you just do it. Its never the ones who say things like that you need to worry about its the ones who are silent to watch out for.

      Im most likely moving to austin in the next few months, not a fan of hearing this though

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    2. Re:So much for... by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes Freedom is more important than general safety.

      When the government says you can't have or do X because it is unsafe. It allows them to take the next step and say the next thing is unsafe and you shouldn't do it.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    3. Re:So much for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It happened countless times. It shouldn't count as a fallacy anymore.

    4. Re:So much for... by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And yet he is still allowed to own guns... Because that freedom is so much more important

      Flamebait, but I'll bite:

      If he made a joke about drunk driving, do you think his driving privileges should be permanently revoked too?

      There's a *huge* difference between a credible threat leveled at a specific target, and just farting around. If you cannot tell the difference, kindly stop your internet service, burn your computer, and cancel your TV/cable/sat subscription.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    5. Re:So much for... by Antipater · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Freedom of speech does not absolve one from responsibility for the consequences of the speech in question.

      Depends on what consequences you're talking about.
      People around you thinking you're an asshole and never talking to you again? No, it doesn't protect you from that.
      Getting arrested and jailed? Yes, in fact, it does protect you from that; that's the entire meaning of the term.

      --
      Everything is better with chainsaws.
    6. Re:So much for... by vidnet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In a Twilight Zone revelation, the authorities do exactly what the people want them to do.

      They're showing a "tough and uncompromising stance on terror" which gets you public support. What if? Think of the children! (except the ones you jail, obviously). If he did happen to have something they could pin on him, they've "stopped a terrorist", gaining more public support.

      If they had done nothing and nothing happened, no one would have cared either way. If they had done nothing and something happened, there would be public outrage, mass firing and countless inquisitions.

      Arresting him was the logical thing.

    7. Re:So much for... by magarity · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And yet he is still allowed to own guns... Because that freedom is so much more important

      Both freedom of speech and freedom to bear arms are explicitly enumerated in the constitution so what's your point, exactly? Other than his free speech is being trampled upon?

    8. Re:So much for... by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "the public invariably crucifies them for failing to follow up"

      Two wrongs don't make a right...

      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
    9. Re:So much for... by gnick · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm curious as to what 'crime' he made by expressing himself this way.

      I think the problem is a little more complicated than that.
      1) Somebody got a phone call from an idiot saying that they believed someone was making a threat.
      2) This person realizes that there is no threat, BUT, if the kid for some unrelated reason commits some act of violence and the media finds out that a warning was ignored, they'll have a field day and the person will be crucified.
      3) So, the person who received the phone call passes along the fact that they got it and it's in somebody else's lap who, using the same logic, feels the need to at least make a show of taking some sort of action.
      4) Spirals out of control and we get a ridiculous arrest over a stupid, but innocent, sarcastic comment.

      Welcome to the modern age...

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    10. Re:So much for... by SecurityTheatre · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The public is wrong for crucifying them for not arresting the 50,000 or so teenagers who, each month, make a crass joke about violence on the Internet.

      That doesn't make them justified to arrest this kid, unless we're seriously short on information and he was clear that he owned a bunch of guns and planned to use them.

      I don't have a problem if this anonymous Canadian lady perhaps called his parents and told them... nosy as hell, but not life destroying.

      But phoning police is absurd.

    11. Re:So much for... by SJHiIlman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and I am also free to take the consequences of my action.

      Then countries such as North Korea must have as much freedom of speech as the US... but there are consequences for exercising the right. That's all. Just consequences.

    12. Re:So much for... by PRMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nope, just in jail for 4½ months for making a joke post immediately followed by LOL JK. But no sentence...

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    13. Re:So much for... by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the public invariably crucifies them for failing to follow up on the warning signs

      Do they really? I see exponentially more outrage at the war on drugs, the patriot act, PRISM and TSA than I do at law enforcement letting the odd criminal slip by. Law enforcement seems to withstand YEARS of complaints about racial profiling and jail for nonviolent offenders, yet they have to utterly destroy this teenager because they might be questioned if he were to have done something?

      Lets not make excuses for them. They crushed him like a bug for a trifling offense because they could.

    14. Re:So much for... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly. Makes this whole mess even more offensive to justice.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    15. Re:So much for... by Applekid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Right, so the slippery slope in the gun control debate is that the constitution only allows for a well-trained militia to keep their guns, but gun-owners have forced it to become anybody's right regardless of training or participation in a militia. The government is trying to go back up the slope (with mandatory ID and criminal record checks), but they just keep sliding back down.

      No, the constitution recognizes the need for a regulated militia and the right of the people. Otherwise:

      1. It would be self contradictory, since regulating your militia is, in turn, regulating arms, which the text says shall not be infringed
      2. It wouldn't be located next to the third amendment, which also puts the freedom of the people over soldiers of the union
      3. It would be unique, as the fifth amendment also refer to the militia as external to the people
      4. It would be misplaced, as rights specifically granted to a government entity (states) that wasn't already addressed in the articles is all the way in the back at amendment ten
      5. It would be redundant, since the military is already presumed to exist as in Article 2

      Anyone can argue whether they like it or not, but the fact is the second amendment, quite clearly, refers to the right of the people. Anyone claiming otherwise is mistaken at best and selectively manipulative at worst.

      --
      More Twoson than Cupertino
  2. Appropriate response by Ice+Tiger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Your tax dollars at work here people.

    --
    "Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
  3. Old News?? by randomuser2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real shame here is that we're hearing about this now, after the kid's been in jail for 3 months. WTF?

  4. Re:Oh, Canada... by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What she did was stupid, and the result of being a nosey busybody, none of which is unusual. What the authorities have done is madness and dangerous.

  5. Re:Teens and their thousands of Facebook "friends" by Synerg1y · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The teen's stupid, the woman's human waste, and... the authorities don't know what jk means. When he gets out I hope they sue for 1st amendment rights violations. Whoever issued that warrant is the real monster here.

  6. Sad by space_jake · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Land of the sensational, home of the afraid.

  7. Re:Oh, Canada... by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's something this particular American and many more here on /. regularly call for an end to.

  8. Re:Sarcasm by intermodal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is just the perfect thread to remind everyone that text has no tone. And a perfect time to remind everyone that we need to stop letting this kind of nonsense by law enforcement go unchallenged. There's nothing about that statement that implies seriousness, and in fact the eating of hearts makes it even more obvious that there is nothing to justify what they've done here.

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
  9. How can you say that?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fallacy: Slippery slope argument.

    How can you say that considering all the bullshit coming out of Washington, DC lately? The government always abusing their power? The NSA was able to get away with it for so long because of abuse of the PATRIOT Act. The TSA is constantly going way beyond their original purpose.

    The Slippery Slope argument is not only true but it is a fact.

    Actually, I can't think of when it's NOT true.

  10. Total cop out by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, they are MOST CERTAINLY NOT "damned if they do and damned f they don't". There is a big difference between doing an ACTUAL INVESTIGATION, and arresting someone without any critical thought or due process.

    If any actual critical thinking was applied here, this kid would not be arrested.

    No one has a problem with the police investigating threats. They are not "damned if they do". The problem starts when they just go off arresting people without any thoughts on if, you know, they actually meant whatever was being written.

    1. Re:Total cop out by void* · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "They have a responsibility to arrest him and see what his intentions were" is one of the scariest statements I've read in this thread.

      --


      Code or be coded.
  11. Why is subject denied bail? by ChromaticDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why is this chap still in jail?

    I've read the articles. Maybe my Google-Fu is weak today. But I cannot find anything that explicitly states why either he was denied bail or the bail was set ludicrously high.

    Having to go to court for this is silly enough. But did a judge seriously deem this teen so much a threat as to deny him bail? I'd really like to know because it would seem to me a judge is who should have added some sanity to this issue.