Facts: Elonis posted threatening statements on his Facebook page towards his ex-wife and other individuals in his life. Before posting, his wife and family left him after he was let go from his job at the amusement park. On December 8, 2010, Anthony Elonis was arrested and charged with five counts of violating a federal anti-threat statue. At trial, Elonis asked to dismiss the charges saying his Facebook comments were not true threats and argued that he was an aspiring rap artist, therefore his comments were a form of artistic expression and therapeutic release to deal with life events. He claimed that his statements where not meant in a literal sense, but in legal terms he did not have a subjective intent to threaten anyone. The trial court denied Elonis motion to dismiss the case. The court held that proper testing for determining if an individual’s threat is an objective one. Elonis appealed to the US Court of Appeals which affirmed his conviction, and the US Supreme Court agreed to hear his case.
Issue: Under …show more content…
The Court began with statute 875(c) reading the communication of the threat must be transmitted and contain threatening words. However, the Court concluded that the statute does not consider the mental state of the author. With statutory silence from the required mens rea, the Court focused on the individual’s wrongdoing must be conscious to the criminal. Therefore, the Chief Justice returned to the statute to separate the wrongful from innocent conduct in that the defendant must have a mental state regarding the comments contain a threat. The Court concluded Elonis’s conviction was theorized on the jury’s conclusion that a reasonable person would clarify his post as threats. The Court rejected this logic because it reduces the blame on the element of crime of failure in injury to another