Opinion ID: 4538050
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Watts v. United States

Text: ¶36 The true threats doctrine originated in 1969 with Watts v. United States. In that case, which arose during the Vietnam War, the eighteen-year-old defendant was convicted under a federal statute forbidding any person from “knowingly and willfully” making “any threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States.” 394 U.S. at 705. Watts had attended a public anti-war rally on the grounds of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., where he joined a scheduled discussion group of young people who were mostly in their teens and early twenties. Id. at 705–06. Watts told the group that he had been drafted but would not report for his physical, and an Army Counter Intelligence Corps investigator who was present overheard Watts state, “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.” Id. at 19 706. Watts and others in the crowd reacted to this statement with laughter. Id. at 707. ¶37 The Supreme Court held that the statute under which Watts was convicted was “[c]ertainly . . . constitutional on its face,” given the government’s overwhelming interest in protecting the safety of the President and allowing him to perform his duties without interference from threats of physical violence. Id. But the Court also explained that because the statute “ma[de] criminal a form of pure speech,” it had to be “interpreted with the commands of the First Amendment clearly in mind.” Id. In particular, “a threat must be distinguished from . . . constitutionally protected speech.” Id. The Court concluded that Watts’s statement, “[t]aken in context,” including its “expressly conditional nature . . . and the reaction of the listeners,” was mere political hyperbole that could not be interpreted as a “true ‘threat’” under the statute. Id. at 708.