Anthony Elonis Should be found in Violation of the 1st Amendment

Purpose of a Supreme Court ruling in this case: To lean toward the verdict which will preserve the core values of the constitution. To protect those which may be threatened from harm or death by another party. To protect: those who exercise their right to speech, those who may make outlandish and exaggerated statements. The two methods of evaluating a comment which may be a threat: 1.(Current) Objective intent- Would a reasonable person, with knowledge of the context of the situation, believe that a comment was a threatening or cause the average reasonable person to be frightened. 2.(Supposed) Subjective intent- Evaluates a comment or supposed threat based on the intent of the speaker Brief Background: Anthony Elonis was convicted of issuing a death threat to a federal officer and his ex-wife. The events leading up to this begin after Anthony Elonis and his wife went through a very rough patch in their relationship. It got so bad Terrified, his then wife filed a restraining order and the police which had already been investigating the case gave it to the FBI under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the constitution, which gives power to the federal government for regulation of intrastate commerce, this includes threats as authorized by the following law: 18 U.S. Code " 875. Section C states that "[w]hoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both." The FBI sent a female officer and her partner to visit Anthony Elonis in order to question him about his posts on facebook. Following the visit Anthony decided to post these 3 comments on his facebook wall: These threats to federal officer were taken as such and Anthony was sentenced to 44 months in prison. He appealed and his case is now awaiting verdict of the Supreme Court. In this round I will contend that Anthony Elonis should not be protected under these threats as well as the standard definition used evaluate threats. I believe that any reasonable person would feel threatened by these comments, especially since he was bold enough to post those comments regarding federal officers. So in essence not only is he dumb for threatening officers, but his is truly guilty of making a death threat and death threats are not protected under the 1st amendment. Argument 1: Danger and protection If the Supreme Court allows Anthony Elonis-like speech to be protected, they then accept the standard of Subjective Intent which means that the courts evaluate if a statement is a threat based on whether or not the comment was intended to be a threat by the poster. Using this evaluation this method would mean that prosecutors in similar cases would be forced to prove what the poster was thinking and what he intended when he posted it. How exactly does one prove what another was thinking at a certain time? The answer is that you really can"t, using this method would protect people who make death threats and provide a legal loophole in which they would hide thus leading to very little guilty charges for those people who make legitimate death threats, and what happens when one can"t detain a criminal who intends to hurt another? Lives become in danger and people die". The opposition to this ruling claims that ruling in favor of objective intent leads to the arrest of young people and people in general who may say in the moment and passion filled statements over the internet which one doesn"t really mean; thus it would mean the conviction of people who are actually innocent. However this is untrue, a reasonable person counts as one who know ALL of the context details, thus if a person is brought to court for scaring someone, they can simply state those context details and will be convicted of no crime. Beyond that, let"s say someone has posted a Very very mean and vile string of comments to another and it is hard to understand or believe the true context details provided by them even though they really didn"t mean what they said. In this case, I think that they deserve to be sentenced, they were being negligent and shot off their mouth without thinking. Example, you drive your car in the perfectly legal manner down a road in your community, you are doing nothing wrong, hands at 10 and 2, mirror adjusted, seatbelt on"ect, just then a child runs in front of your vehicle and you kill him or her. You are going to jail, despite what your intentions were or whether or not it was your real fault, the law will put you away for what you "commited". You have been "negligent". And that is the charge which should be given to those who state Extremely scary frightening comments. One cannot yell FIRE in a movie theater for a reason, and if one does, it does not matter what the intent of the speaker was, it is illegal.