TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Dec 1, 2014

From the violent lyrics of rap music to the crude comments of teenagers in video-game chat rooms, the U.S. Supreme Court struggled today over where to draw the line between free speech and illegal threats in the digital age. The debate came in the case of a Pennsylvania man convicted of posting violent threats on Facebook about killing his estranged wife, shooting up a school and slitting the throat of an FBI agent. Defense lawyers said the man was merely "venting" and did not mean to threaten anyone, while the government argued the standard should be whether his words would make a reasonable person feel threatened not what he intended. The Citizen Tribune has the story from the Associated Press.