Court Opinion

ID: 9456507
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:55:12.960971+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:00.455632
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge (dissenting) :
I would affirm the conviction.
I think we have succeeded only in getting ourselves amidst a tempest of semantics, and that substantively the test applied by the District Court was the one the majority prescribes. I could accept substantially all that the majority says, if its conclusion were only for af-firmance.
Of course the apparent intention test was misapplied when it was held to include statements made in jest and the obvious hyperbole. Subsequent correetion of earlier misapplications of the test, however, ought not to require reversal of a conviction obtained when the proper test was correctly applied.
We deal here with a true threat, as the majority readily concedes. There is nothing in the relation between the two guards, or in any of the surrounding circumstances, in the words that were spoken, or in the manner in which they were spoken containing the slightest suggestion of a jest. For all that appears, the words were spoken in deadly seriousness.
If the author of such a threat is to be halted on the basis of a commission of an offense prior to the time of an actual attempt to execute the threat, when the gun barrel is aimed at the President and the finger is on the trigger, his intention at the time the threat is made must be judged on the basis of the words, themselves, in the context in which they are spoken or written. It is simply an objective standard for measuring the defendant’s intention. It is, in- short, what the majority says should be done in the ultimate paragraph of the supplementary opinion.
That is to me, however, the “apparent intention” test. The trier-of-fact looks at the words, the context in which they were spoken, including the reaction of the listeners, to determine the apparent! intention of the speaker at the time off the true threat.
What the majority would have the District Court do on a retrial has already been done. The words were not considered by the District Court in isolation, but in their full context; and it has been determined that, in that light, the words were a manifestation of a present intention to kill the President. The trial judge’s use of the word “apparent” in referring to the defendant’s intention appears to me to have meant no more than that his intention was being appraised by objective criteria, which, indeed were the only criteria available.
*17To the extent, therefore, that the majority substantively embraces the apparent intention test, as I understand it, I agree, though I disagree with their verbal rejection of it and the reversal of this conviction which meets the substantive standards they prescribe.
Nor can I agree that the majority has adequately distinguished Roy v. United States, 9 Cir., 416 F.2d 874, and United States v. Compton, 2 Cir., 428 F.2d 18. The majority says that because the threat in Roy was made to a telephone operator and the threat in Compton to a New York City policeman, the defendants could reasonably anticipate their communication to the White House with resultant disruption of presidential activity. The defendant here, however, made his threat to a shipyard security guard who promptly reported it to his superior who relayed it to the Secret Service, the agency immediately charged with the protection of the President; and subsequent investigation was conducted by the Secret Service. We are not told whether President Nixon actually heard of the threats, but the Secret Service did. That is all that appears in Roy and more than appears in Compton. Moreover, one who did communicate such a threat to a shipyard security guard,* as the defendant did, should anticipate its communication to the Secret Service as reasonably as one who communicates it to a city policeman, and probably much more so than one who communicates it to a telephone operator having no training or duties in security matters.
For such reasons, I respectfully dissent.
WINTER, Circuit Judge, authorizes me to state that he concurs in the views I have expressed.

 The two were only casually acquainted. There wras nothing in their relationship to lead the defendant to believe the other would respect the communications as confidential.