I'll have some bridge rubble to sell you tomorrow Then, he wrote a post on Facebook about one of the agents who visited him: Are you?"Ī week later, Elonis posted about local law enforcement and a kindergarten class, which caught the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'm willing to go to jail for my constitutional rights. Yet even more illegal to show an illustrated diagram.Įlonis ended the post with this statement: "Art is about pushing limits. I also found out that it’s incredibly illegal, extremely illegal to go on Facebook and say something like the best place to fire a mortar launcher at her house would be from the cornfield behind it because of easy access to a getaway road and you’d have a clear line of sight through the sun room. Um, but what’s interesting is that it’s very illegal to say I really, really think someone out there should kill my wife.īut not illegal to say with a mortar launcher. Now it was okay for me to say it right then because I was just telling you that it's illegal for me to say I want to kill my wife. It's one of the only sentences that I'm not allowed to say. ĭid you know that it's illegal for me to say I want to kill my wife? It was the first time the Court has heard a case considering true threats and the limits of speech on social media. The ACLU filed an amicus brief in support of the petitioner. In controversy were the purported threats of violent rap lyrics written by Anthony Douglas Elonis and posted to Facebook under a pseudonym. § 875(c) ) requires proof of subjective intent to threaten or whether it is enough to show that a "reasonable person" would regard the statement as threatening. _ (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning whether conviction of threatening another person over interstate lines (under 18 U.S.C. Roberts, joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, KaganĮlonis v. Third Circuit reversed and remanded.Ĭhief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia A court's instruction that requires only negligence with respect to the communication of a threat is not sufficient to support a conviction under 18 U.S.C.