Opinion ID: 2514209
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Count 3: First degree terroristic threatening

Text: Valdivia argues that the prosecution did not adduce substantial evidence from which a person of reasonable caution could conclude that his remark to Officer Kawelo, I'm gonna kill you and your police uniform, was so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate[,] and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution, see State v. Chung, 75 Haw. 398, 862 P.2d 1063 (1993), and, therefore, that his remark was not a true threat but, rather, constitutionally protected speech. [5] Valdivia posits that his remark was equivocal, conditional, and not immediate because it was made . . . after being . . . sprayed [with pepper spray], placed under arrest, handcuffed[,] and transported to the emergency room secured by a seat bar and guarded by two armed police officers and, moreover, because it was not accompanied by any sort of threatening movements or attempts to free himself. The crux of Valdivia's argument is simply that there was no realistic prospect that [he] would imminently execute the literal words of his [remark] or that he had the ability to do so. On the record of the present matter, in order to convict Valdivia of first degree terroristic threatening, pursuant to HRS §§ 707-715 and 707-716(1)(c), see supra note 2, the prosecution was required, at a minimum, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Valdivia threatened, by word, to cause bodily injury to Officer Kawelo in reckless disregard of the risk of terrorizing him. In other words, the prosecution was required to prove two things: (1) that, under the circumstances, Valdivia's remark threatened to cause bodily injury to Officer Kawelo  that is, that his words (the conduct element) bore the attributes of a true threat (the attendant circumstances element), see HRS § 702-205; Chung, supra ; and (2) that he recklessly disregarded the risk that his remark would terrorize Officer Kawelo (the requisite state of mind). As the commentary to HRS § 707-715 explains, the gravamen of the offense of terroristic threatening is conduct causing serious alarm for personal safety[.] Thus, according to the commentary, the offense of terroristic threatening proscribes words or conduct that constitute a threat of bodily injury because such inchoate threats induce a personal apprehension of danger, rather than because there is a possibility [that] the threatened evil [will actually be] accomplished. Commentary on HRS § 707-715. As we discuss infra, Valdivia's argument  i.e., that because the prosecution's evidence did not establish that there was a possibility that the evil Valdivia threatened (literally killing Officer Kawelo) would be accomplished without temporal delay, he therefore cannot be guilty of terroristic threatening  is flawed. Valdivia relies heavily upon Chung, supra . Chung was a high school teacher disgruntled with the principal of the public school at which he taught. Chung, 75 Haw. at 403-06, 862 P.2d at 1067-69. Chung expressed his frustration with the principal to a colleague and asserted, [A] day doesn't pass that [I] don't feel like killing myself[.] . . . I think I'll bring a gun[;] I'll shoot the principal and shoot myself. Id. at 403-404, 862 P.2d at 1067. On the same day, Chung made similar remarks to other colleagues and displayed a firearm and ammunition to several of them. Id. at 404-405, 862 P.2d at 1067-68. Chung's colleagues reported the threats to the vice principal, and the principal was advised of at least two of these reports. Id. at 405, 862 P.2d at 1068. Although Chung, on the day he uttered the foregoing statements, had been placed on a ten-day paid administrative leave, he nevertheless appeared at the school the following day carrying a concealed firearm and, shortly thereafter, was apprehended by two police officers. Id. at 405-406, 862 P.2d at 1068. On appeal, this court held that the circuit court erred in dismissing terroristic threatening charges against Chung because the circuit court incorrectly concluded that his remarks were constitutionally protected speech. Id. at 415, 862 P.2d at 1072. In doing so, this court relied on United States v. Kelner, 534 F.2d 1020 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1022, 97 S.Ct. 639, 50 L.Ed.2d 623 (1976), noting that the question presented by Chung was identical to that addressed by the Kelner court, to wit, whether an unequivocal threat which has not ripened by any overt act into conduct in the nature of an attempt is nevertheless punishable under the First Amendment [to the United States Constitution], even though it may additionally involve elements of expression. Chung, 75 Haw. at 415, 862 P.2d at 1072 (quoting Kelner, 534 F.2d at 1026). In other words, the issue in Kelner, as it is in the present matter, was the point at which speech ceases to be cloaked with constitutional protection and becomes subject to criminal prosecution as a true threat to cause bodily injury. In Chung, we held that the short answer was relatively simple: [A] statement that amount[s] to a threat to kill . . . [is] not protected by the First Amendment[.] Id. at 415-16, 862 P.2d at 1072 (quoting Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U.S. 378, 386-87, 107 S.Ct. 2891, 97 L.Ed.2d 315 (1987)) (some brackets added and some in original). The rationale underlying the answer, we explained, was aptly articulated, for the purposes of deciding Chung, by the Kelner court: [T]he word threat . . . exclude[s] statements which are, when taken in context, not true threats because they are conditional and made in jest[.] . . . [T]hreats punishable consistently with the First Amendment [are] only those [that,] according to their language and context[,] convey[ ] a gravity of purpose and likelihood of execution so as to constitute speech beyond the pale of protected vehement, caustic[, and] unpleasantly sharp attacks.[]. . . . . . [P]roof of a true threat . . . focuse[s] on threats which are so unambiguous and have such immediacy that they convincingly express an intention of being carried out. . . . Chung, 75 Haw. at 416, 862 P.2d at 1072-73 (quoting Kelner, 534 F.2d at 1026-27) (citation omitted) (some brackets and ellipsis points added and some in original). In other words, inasmuch as a remark, such as a joke or caustic hyperbole, is not susceptible to an interpretation that would place an objective, reasonable recipient, at whom the remark was directed and who was familiar with the context in which it was uttered, in reasonable fear for his or her personal safety, it therefore falls within the ambit of free speech protected both by the United States and Hawai`i Constitutions and cannot predicate a terroristic threatening conviction. See, e.g., United States v. Sovie, 122 F.3d 122, 125 (2d Cir.1997) (observing that the Kelner test of a true threat is an objective one  namely, whether an ordinary, reasonable recipient [of the threat] who is familiar with the context of the [threat] would interpret it as a threat of [bodily] injury (quoting United States v. Malik, 16 F.3d 45, 49 (2d Cir.1994)) (some brackets added and some in original)). Thus, we agreed in Chung with the Kelner court that a remark threatening bodily injury ceases to be constitutionally protected and ripens into a true threat when it is objectively susceptible to an interpretation that could induce fear of bodily injury in a reasonable recipient, at whom the remark is directed and who is aware of the circumstances under which the remark was made, because those circumstances reflect that the threatening remark was so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate[,] and specific as to the person threatened, [that it] convey[ed] a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution. 75 Haw. at 416-17, 862 P.2d at 1073 (quoting Kelner, 534 F.2d at 1027). Applying the foregoing to the facts in Chung, we held that because (1) Chung repeatedly expressed his intention to shoot the principal at the school while displaying a firearm and ammunition, (2) his remarks were sufficiently and objectively alarming to impel a recipient to report them to the vice principal, and (3) his presence at the school was unauthorized at the time, Chung's remarks constituted true threats. Id. at 417, 862 P.2d at 1073. As our discussion reflects, Chung judicially narrowed the meaning of the word threat, as employed in HRS § 707-715, in order to salvage the statutes defining terroristic threatening offenses from unconstitutional overbreadth. As a result, Chung mandates that, in a terroristic threatening prosecution, the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a remark threatening bodily injury is a true threat, such that it conveyed to the person to whom it was directed a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution. In other words, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the alleged threat was objectively capable of inducing a reasonable fear of bodily injury in the person at whom the threat was directed and who was aware of the circumstances under which the remarks were uttered. Under the particular circumstances of Chung, as we have indicated, the true threat was so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate[,] and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution. Applying the foregoing paradigm to the present matter, the facts that Valdivia had been pepper sprayed, arrested, handcuffed, and transported to a hospital did not, in themselves, render his remark to Officer Kawelo equivocal. The circumstances did not inject ambiguity or doubt into, or otherwise dilute the clarity of, Valdivia's declaration, I'm gonna kill you. Similarly, simply because Valdivia did not elaborate upon when or how he would kill Officer Kawelo did not render his remark conditional. Failing to articulate the manner by which he would carry out his threat did not imbue his remark with any qualification or limitation. Finally, Valdivia does not contend that his remark lacked the requisite specificity as to the person threatened, nor could he, insofar as Officers Kawelo and Kailihou testified that Valdivia looked directly at Officer Kawelo at the time he uttered it. Thus, Valdivia's claim of insufficiency of the evidence hinges on whether his remark was immediate, such that it bore an imminent prospect of execution. We have not had occasion to revisit Chung and determine whether, as Valdivia's argument presupposes, the imminency required to establish a true threat is constitutionally restricted to temporal immediacy, such that a threat is a true one only if it can be executed without lapse of time [or] delay, instantly, or at once. Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language 712 (1989) (defining immediately). In our view, neither the free speech clause of the United States Constitution nor that of the Hawai`i Constitution, see supra note 5, impose a temporal immediacy requirement that must be met before words become subject to criminal prosecution as true threats. The context of Kelner, which was the source of the true threat standard that we adopted in Chung, is instructive. The relevant federal statute purported to criminalize any threat to injure the person of another that was transmitted in interstate commerce. Kelner, 534 F.2d at 1020 & n. 1. The threat at issue  i.e., that we were planning to assassinate [Yasser] Arafat  was uttered by a member of the Jewish Defense League, who was armed and dressed in paramilitary clothing, during a press conference conducted after a political demonstration that protested Arafat's address to the United Nations. Id. at 1020-21. Addressing the constitutional limits of the statute's application to Kelner's utterance, the Kelner court expressed its belief that limit[ing] . . . the word `threat' to threats . . . which according to their language and context convey[ ] a gravity of purpose and likelihood of execution so as to constitute speech beyond the pale of protected [speech] satisfied First Amendment concerns as fully as would [a] . . . requirement that specific intent to carry out the threat be proven. Kelner, 534 F.2d at 1026 (citation and footnote omitted). Thus, under Kelner, it was a threat's gravity of purpose and likelihood of execution that ultimately placed it beyond the pale of constitutionally protected expression. Id. (emphasis added). In In re M.S., 10 Cal.4th 698, 42 Cal. Rptr.2d 355, 896 P.2d 1365 (1995), the California Supreme Court had occasion to construe Kelner in the context of a hate crimes statute, which provided in relevant part that no person shall be convicted of violating [this statute] based upon speech alone, except upon a showing that the speech itself threatened violence against a specific person . . . and that the defendant had the apparent ability to carry out the threat. Id. at 706-707 & n. 1, 42 Cal.Rptr.2d 355, 896 P.2d at 1368-69 & n. 1 (emphasis added). In response to the defendants' argument that the statute was unconstitutionally overbroad because it fail[ed] to require that a punishable threat be unconditional and imminent, the M.S. court ruled that the defendants were mistaken in assuming that the First Amendment always requires the threatened harm to be imminent for the threat to be constitutionally punishable. It does not. Id. at 711, 42 Cal.Rptr.2d 355, 896 P.2d at 1372. Reading Kelner in context, and bearing in mind that, at the time Kelner threatened Arafat, Arafat had not yet arrived in the United States and there was no evidence that he was even aware that Kelner had uttered the threat, the M.S. court noted that the Kelner court found the requisite immediacy in the fact the defendant professed the present ability to carry out the threat to kill Arafat: `We have people who have been trained and who are out now[.]' Id. at 712, 42 Cal.Rptr.2d 355, 896 P.2d at 1372 (quoting Kelner, 534 F.2d at 1028). Because, among other things, the California hate crimes statute expressly required that the defendant possess the apparent ability to carry out the threat, which the M.S. court construed to mean that the threat must be one that would reasonably tend to induce fear in the victim, the imminency requirement imposed in Kelner  i.e., that the threat bore a likelihood of execution  was functionally satisfied. Id. at 712-15, 42 Cal.Rptr.2d 355, 896 P.2d at 1372-74. We agree with the California Supreme Court that the imminency required by Kelner, and hence by Chung, can be established by means other than proof that a threatening remark will be executed immediately, at once, and without delay. Rather, as a general matter, the prosecution must prove that the threat was objectively susceptible to inducing fear of bodily injury in a reasonable person at whom the threat was directed and who was familiar with the circumstances under which the threat was uttered. See Sovie, 122 F.3d at 125; cf. In re M.S., 10 Cal.4th at 711-715, 42 Cal.Rptr.2d 355, 896 P.2d at 1372-74. Of course, one means of proving the foregoing would be to establish, as in Chung and Kelner, that the threat was uttered under circumstances that rendered it so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate[,] and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution. See Chung, 75 Haw. at 416-17, 862 P.2d at 1073; Kelner, 534 F.2d at 1026-27. But another would be to establish that the defendant possessed the apparent ability to carry out the threat, such that the threat . . . would reasonably tend to induce fear [of bodily injury] in the victim. In re M.S., 10 Cal.4th at 712-15, 42 Cal.Rptr.2d 355, 896 P.2d at 1372-74. In light of the foregoing, Valdivia's argument that his utterances lacked the requisite immediacy because, at the time, he was handcuffed misses the mark, being no more than an assertion that there was no possibility of the threatened evil being accomplished at the instant of its expression. Given the evidence that pepper spray had little or no effect on Valdivia's power of resistance and that it required four police officers to physically apprehend him, the jury could find that Valdivia possessed the apparent ability to carry out his threat and that the threat would reasonably tend to induce fear of bodily injury in Officer Kawelo. Accordingly, we hold that prosecution adduced substantial evidence from which a person of reasonable caution could conclude that Valdivia, in fact, uttered a true threat.