SUPREME COURT MAKES IT MORE DIFFICULT TO CONVICT SOMEONE OF MAKING A THREAT

The Supreme Court ruled this week to make it more difficult to convict a person of making a violent threat, including against the president or other elected officials.

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The Biden administration had warned that the internet and social media have expanded the number and kinds of threats in recent years, including online harassment, intimidation and stalking. And they warned the case could affect the ability to prosecute threats against public officials, which have increased in recent years.

The high court was ruling in a case that involves a man who was sentenced to more than four years in prison in Colorado for sending threatening Facebook messages. The man’s lawyers had argued that he suffers from mental illness and never intended his messages to be threatening.

The question for the court was whether prosecutors must show that a person being prosecuted for making a threat knew their behavior was threatening or whether prosecutors just have to prove that a reasonable person would see it as threatening.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a majority of the court that prosecutors have to show that “the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.”