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Page Number: 13

10 

COUNTERMAN v. COLORADO 

Opinion of the Court 

involving  only  political  hyperbole.  See  Rogers  v.  United 
States, 422 U. S. 35 (1975).  The Court in Rogers reversed 
the  conviction  on  other  grounds,  but  Justice  Marshall  fo-
cused  on  the  danger  of  deterring  non-threatening  speech.
An objective standard, turning only on how reasonable ob-
servers would construe a statement in context, would make 
people  give  threats  “a  wide  berth.”  Id.,  at  47  (concurring 
opinion).  And so use of that standard would discourage the 
“uninhibited,  robust,  and  wide-open  debate  that  the  First 
Amendment is intended to protect.”  Id., at 48 (quoting Sul-
livan, 376 U. S., at 270). 

The  reasoning—and  indeed  some  of  the  words—came 
straight from this Court’s decisions insisting on a subjective
element in other unprotected-speech cases, whether involv-
ing defamation, incitement, or obscenity.  No doubt, the ap-
proach  in  all  of  those  cases  has  a  cost:  Even  as  it  lessens
chill of protected speech, it makes prosecution of otherwise
proscribable, and often dangerous, communications harder.
And the balance between those two effects may play out dif-
ferently in different contexts, as the next part of this opin-
ion  discusses.    But  the  ban  on  an  objective  standard  re-
mains  the  same,  lest  true-threats  prosecutions  chill  too
much protected, non-threatening expression. 

B 
The next question concerns the type of subjective stand-
ard  the  First  Amendment  requires.    The  law  of  mens  rea 
offers  three  basic  choices.  Purpose  is  the  most  culpable
level in the standard mental-state hierarchy, and the hard-
est  to  prove.  A  person  acts  purposefully  when  he  “con-
sciously  desires”  a  result—so  here,  when  he  wants  his 
words to be received as threats.  United States v. Bailey, 444 
U. S. 394, 404 (1980).  Next down, though not often distin-
guished from purpose, is knowledge.  Ibid.  A person acts
knowingly when “he is aware that [a] result is practically
certain  to  follow”—so  here,  when  he  knows  to  a  practical