The Comal County District Attorney's Office did not intend for Carter to suffer what happened next,
Flanary says, but it was reasonably foreseeable: He was sexually assaulted.
The fact that prisoners are commonly subject to sexual assault, and that this consequence is trotted out as an acceptable deterrent to crime, illustrates just how uncivilized the US prison-industrial-complex is in this, the year 2014.
Failure to protect vulnerable and, or, weaker inmates from other inmates shows negligence on the part of the government. This is completely unacceptable as it constitutes cruel & unusual punishment, and is yet another blatant disregard for the rights of We the People.
Then there's the fact that the context of the offensive speech was excluded from evidence.
I'm glad to see someone with what I think is the appropriate level of outrage. A lot of these comments seem to equivocate or qualify, but few of them recognize that regardless of whether someone is guilty or not, the sexual assault of a prisoner represents a profound institutional failure in every case.
That we citizens of the US have a tendency to tolerate this all-too-frequent failure is a shame to this entire nation.
Prison in the US isn't about rehabilitation it's about punishment. No one goes to prison thinking they're going to come out as a better person with a new outlook on life. They're going to come out war-torn and barely above functional with little to no prospects.
And why are we paying tax dollars for this? Especially when some of these prisons are run by for-profit corporations?
If there's a single way to spur the economy it would be to close down many of these prisons, and reprogram the law enforcement goal of populating them.
Where else are profitable prison industries to find workers?
Edit: This is a slightly complex relationship but it holds. Once you start down a path of mass incarceration, there's pressure to find a profitable use for prisoners. Once you have a profit-making use, there's a demand for more prisoners. So while it is chicken and egg, it's pretty clear that the demand is a factor today. It is also worth noting that the the 13th Amendment specifically allows slavery as punishment for a crime.
This guy, as far as I can tell, isn't convicted for anything yet. So, according to the law ("innocent until proven guilty") he is innocent. Even if thousands saw him torture a dozen babies, he should get better protection, even if you think prison should solely be for punishment (an idea that, IMO, is both morally wrong and economically stupid)
This is exactly why the stories of people that do come out a better person (got a degree, found religion, etc) make the "news". No body talks much about the other 99% that just come out more pissed at the world than before they went in.
Little to no prospects: right, because punishment doesn't stop when you leave prison. Punishment continues until the day you die: you can't get a good job because virtually no one will hire an ex-con.
And that's not just because employers are bad people - it's the propensity of people to sue and win against the employers if an employee commits a crime. The employer is even further liable if he knew the employee was an ex-con.
...and to make things worse, innocent people are often in jail for a considerable amount of time. If you're waiting for trial and can't pay bail...tough luck.
I keep saying, that if I lived in the US and was picked out for jury-duty I'd have an extremely hard time of voting to convict anyone, even violent criminals, because of the nature of the US prison system.
Even more so because it is unclear whether it actually makes the public any safer, given the extreme re-offending rate.
> Until that point, his only brush with the law was a temporary restraining order two years earlier.
> "He started threatening me, saying that he would kill me. ... I told the school officers, [and] they started watching him really closely. He would say that he would shoot up the school."
So I'll start by playing Devil's Advocate very briefly. It's interesting how facts can be shaped with different language ("his only brush with the law"): it appears the restraining order from two years prior related to similar threats to those alleged in the Facebook comments (although in a remarkably different context).
Now that notwithstanding, it seems there are many glaring issues, both ethical and legal, with the way this has been handled.
Based on a screenshot of a Facebook comment without context or verification from Facebook an 18 year-old was detained for months without trial, including his 19th birthday, and offered a plea bargain of 8 years jail (!). An unaffordable bail of $500k was set, and if not for media attention, pro bono counsel, and a generous anonymous donor he would still be detained. During his detention he was repeatedly sexually assaulted, withheld legal counsel, and coerced to confess with false promises of freedom. After media focus an offer of 10 years (!) probation was put forward.
On a technical note, the original warrant included false testimony (matching of the Facebook profile picture to a driver's licence when the accused did not have a licence) and the indictment misquoted the original Facebook comment.
Another interesting point is when the system acts irrationally, this is not lost on psychopaths and those with evil and malicious intents.
Knowing that a snapshot of a Facebook post taken out of context can land that person in jail for months is a goldmine opportunity for some people.
This just adds to the list the other things could include: plant child porn on their machine, call the terrorist hotline with a tip, launch a flood of ssh port scans into a .mil address from their machine, and bam! easy peasy that person's life is ruined.
This is not unlike the witch hunts in repressive regimes where people are encouraged to rat on each other. Quite often that is taken advantage. It used to be report the person to be a "Communist" or "report that person to be an Anti-Communist".
Unless there is public and swift punishment for the prosecutors or the "professionals" in the chain of people this has passed through, this will repeat again and again. There is just very little incentive not to "keep going" with these tips. The potential repercussions for ignoring it could be much harsher. So why not...
As a person who has sat on a grand jury, I can speak from personal experience, and let me tell you:
Listening to pud-pulling detectives stumble through the technical details of correlating an IP address to a service provider, at the rehearsed prompts provided by power-tripping district attourneys, and then glancing across the 22 other grand jurors, some withed glazed eyes, and others desperately nodding in agreement, as if they had something to prove to the phantom presence of their usually condescending 13-year-old children about their technical savvy, and the relationship that holds with being able to read a cable bill, I was deeply disturbed by the very low bar that was set, in order to prove to the lowest common denomenator that someone committed a computer crime, when I was out-voted on a whether to bring a flimsy case to trial.
Afterward, I casually chatted up each of the people that voted to bring a guy before the judge for allegedly creating fake credit cards and charging thousands of dollars under someone else's name, to gauge whether they understood what they had just voted on.
Most of them had a hard time using their smart phones for anything besides phone calls, couldn't tell me what an IP address actually was, couldn't readily distinguish AOL dial up service and AOL keyword searches from "Googling the internet" or typing in a URL in their browsers address bar, and were mystified by the difference between typing up a Word document and attaching it to an e-mail, versus just typing and sending the e-mail itself.
The difference between how quickly things went to trial, or how long we deliberated on a particular case often hinged on how close to 5PM it was. The DA's seemed to be aware of this, and the complexity and "appeal" of cases and the order of their presentation seemed to be planned accordingly.
Seems exactly like modern day witchcraft/wizardry hunt.
If a Middle Age dude was an expert in chemistry, he'd probably be tried quite similarly. The fact that no one around him could even comprehend what chemistry is, is now completely irrelevant to them ruining his life.
Now replace that with technology, the people with modern day morons and death with impossibly high bail/languishing in prison for years together ruining any chance of an average, let alone decent future and you've got what we have today.
The point is, they don't know the subject yet feel that they know enough. History, it seems never changes.
Was the defense not able to submit the IM context themselves? The conclusion seems to be that it would basically exonerate him, so why could they not disclose it?
The article goes so far as to mention the context "hasn't surfaced". Why on earth not? Is this because Facebook refuses to release the IM history?
Important to point out, re the restraining order, that according to the article he wasn't given the opportunity to respond to the charges made against him. Restraining orders aren't convictions, I am surprised that it seems they can be used as evidence given that they apparently do not imply any finding of fact.
> So I'll start by playing Devil's Advocate very briefly. It's interesting how facts can be shaped with different language ("his only brush with the law"): it appears the restraining order from two years prior related to similar threats to those alleged in the Facebook comments (although in a remarkably different context).
IANAL but I'm reasonably confident that a restraining order he received as a minor would not be admissible as evidence in this case, and thus should be irrelevant to the prosecution.
In Canada? Yup. The YOA is very expansive. For example, my neighborhood's most prolific tagger is in his mid-'20s and the press still isn't allowed to mention his name when he gets picked up for the nth time because he was previously arrested as a young offender. If they said "Joe Blow was arrested for writing tag X on an overpass" then everybody would know that Joe Blow is X and his young offenses of writing X on an overpass would be revealed.
You absolutely cannot be tied to crimes you committed as a youth. This way, no matter how bad you screw up, you have a clean slate as an adult.
I also feel that, if you are an adult and you've served your sentence and paid your debt to society, that your file is closed to the public. The only time it would be accessed is in determining the sentence for your next crime.
This cannot be stressed or up voted enough. One you have a black mark on your record in this country (USA), it never goes away. At least in most EU countries the law stipulates that after 7 years it's off your record. We, as a country, have given up on rehabilitation and reintegration.
> IANAL but I'm reasonably confident that a restraining order he received as a minor would not be admissible as evidence in this case, and thus should be irrelevant to the prosecution.
And yet it might be relevant to the reason he was arrested, if the quotation in the message above yours (which is unsourced) is true.
Kid gets arrested for Facebook talk: "INJUSTICE!"
...but he had a previous restraining order for similar threats: "They might have a point."
What's ridiculous about this case is that they kept at it.
The problem is, in most states its stupidly easy to get a TRO - you dont need proof, just fill out a form, indicate you feel threatened by someone, pay the fee, boom, TRO.
The ideal of a government of laws is just an illusion. We are a government of men and women who pull whatever crap they can get away with.
This case was so badly botched even before one gets to free speech questions that one wonders why, at some point, the state didn't just admit error and agree to have the case dismissed. This reads like "let's see. There are 10 Amendments in the Bill of Rights. How many of them can we mess with? Now obviously we can't violate the 3rd, 9th, or 10th amendments here but maybe we can mess with the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eigth..."
One wonders why they stopped at the Bill of Rights. Maybe they could get the city to pass a Bill of Attainder while they are at it. Maybe they could have gone for broke and asked the state to station national guardsmen in his bedroom on release?
I'm gonna point out, getting a TRO in many states is as easy as filling out a form, and paying a fee. All you need to do is state you feel threatened by someone.
Can you please link to the indictment you saw (which the grand jury also saw and true billed)? I couldn't find it with a quick glance at the Comal County Court at Law Portal (I only found a Register of Actions).
I'm only referring to this article where they make that claim and a brief google of other news articles where they make the same claim. It's quite possible the journalists have all made factual errors - I can't find the indictment either but I just assumed indictments aren't usually public.
I am probably instigating a flame ware...but I strongly disagree.
>here is someone who threatening them.
Threatening them, who is them? As deplorable as his speech was, it was not an identifiable threat of some imminent danger to some specific victim. (ie. I would have a different opinion if he identified a school by name). A counter-argument to my opinion is that we could have people making very real, but vague threats and police could not take action until after it is to late. However, there must be a balance between right to free speech and police powers, I just tend to err on the side of rights over government power.
>If someone came up to me on the street and screamed I'm going to fucking kill you, I wouldn't argue for his freedom of speech.
Your example is good because it can highlights where the law can strike a fair balance better rights and powers. First, I agree in your example I would not argue for right to free speech, but the declarant in the story is more akin to someone on the street screaming "I want to fucking kill someone" not directed at anyone and otherwise not posing an immanent threat.
If this kind of speech is to be punished with 8 years prison or 10 years probation, police just need to log onto Xbox Live and have a field day with all the threats...in fact one of the statements from the thread in this story "go drink bleach", I have only heard before on Xbox Live and I have heard it many times from various players - though this example is not a threat there are plenty to be found...mostly involving mothers.
I don't follow your first remark. Are you trying to say that because he said "kindergarten" instead of naming a specific kindergarten that it's no longer threatening or a threat?
It is still a threat under the definition, but because he said "kindergarten" instead of naming a specific kindergarten I am saying it is protected speech under the 1st Amendment.
There are exceptions, but generally, it is not criminal to discuss committing a crime, in order to constitute a crime there usually needs to be a substantial step in furtherance of committing the crime.
Not exactly. He didn't say he "could" shoot up a kindergarten, he said he was going to. Is there a difference between naming a specific kindergarten? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean only one of them is a threat.
I really don't think that someone should be charged with 'making terroristic threats' - nor any kind of threats - with just a vague statement of intent.
He didn't threaten anyone's children. He threatened children as a concept in order to shock. Is the difference between shouting at someone that you are going to kill them and shouting that you could kill someone. The first is a specific threat, the second is the sort of thing that is said after a bad day at work.
If you took everyone seriously when they threatened non-specific murder, you would have to jail everyone who makes jokes about how many points you get for running over different kinds of pedestrians while driving, which at least in the UK seems to be around half of all drivers.
You just said "I'm going to fucking kill you." If context does not matter (which is the entire premise of this case), then you are just as guilty as Justin. Are you still so eager to police speech?
The thing is that a true threat, something that is directed and credible, and forces someone to actually protect themselves against it, can be rightly criminalized by the states.
In other words, it isn't screaming at someone, it is a true and credible threat, that might be worth punishing relatively harshly.
Let me put this another way. Suppose instead of screaming at someone the individual went up to the home of a black family and burned a cross on their sidewalk (so no tresspassing) at 2am, and left a piece of cardboard on their door saying "Watch out. We are coming for you!" That's a pretty classic terroristic threat in US history. It may consist entirely of expressive acts and no real property crime. Certainly that's worthy of significant punishment.
Now this case doesn't even come close to that hypothetical and I think the differences are illustrative. It isn't specific. It isn't a threat directed at the target. It isn't disruptive by itself. So if the individual isn't taking any steps to make it happen, I think it really should fall in the category protected by Brandenburg v. Ohio. Indeed, if you read footnote 1 of that case, you will see that the speech at issue here was a lot less likely to cause imminent lawless action, was a lot less terroristic, and was a lot less credible than the speech found protected in that case.
> Well, people have children. The protection they feel must be absolute, and here is someone who threatening them.
Meh....
While I was driving my two kids to school today (in Jakarta), my youngest climbed on my lap. Where I am there are no laws against that, so I just kept driving.
I think it is interesting that the people I know who have no kids fit your view of looking for absolute protection more than the actual parents I know. There's a certain point where, as a parent, you come to terms with the fact that the world is a dangerous place.
> If someone came up to me on the street and screamed I'm going to fucking kill you, I wouldn't argue for his freedom of speech.
This would be true especially if you knew the person and had reason to believe that the individual really intended to do that.
On the other hand, if it was one of your bowling buddies you were slated to play with the next day and he came up to you and said, "Tomorrow, I am gonna fucking kill you with a 300!" I would totally say "free speech" and I wouldn't think he was going to bring over the elite Spartan guard and kill you with Greek swords or something.....
The average person does not make a cost-benefit analysis for things like this because that would require admitting that the question is complicated, or must result in some risk of death. Instead they silently drop the cost half of the equation by telling themselves that 0% risk of death must be possible, and rationalize away the costs of such a delusion by ignoring cases like this, or figuring that the victim must have deserved it somehow (with the silent assumption that nothing like this could ever happen to them or their loved ones).
In recent years Obama justified various state excesses by saying something like "You can't have 100% security and 100% privacy." My immediate thought was, "Well, that's vacuously true, because you can't have 100% security ever."
I think it's more that most people operate on the (apparently mistaken) assumption that the police are here to __protect__ us, and to find out who is guilty, while also exercising discretion and not prosecuting people who, paraphrasing the article, meant no harm but acted like an asshole. Thus, people figure that it's "better to be safe than sorry", and assume that the police and justice system will Find The Truth and sort things out.
Unfortunately, that's not the case: the job of the police seems to be to make a case, and when combined with the plea bargain system we have, it's basically a game of "how can we convict this guy".
Do I think investigation was warranted? Sure. But it definitely seems like overreaction to treat this as a valid terrorist threat, rather than a kid (or adult) saying something mean and flippant.
I also find it hard to believe that Facebook was "unable" to give details of the conversation. If the defense believes that the context (unshown in the screenshot) is important, I am surprised they can't subpoena the entire history of his actions in that timeframe, or of the threads he was posting in over that 48-hour period, and have an expert witness collect and show the context they say is so important.
IANAL and I am not 100% sure which part of the Stored Communciations Act covers the private messages. But either they need a search warrant or they just need to subpoena them (depending on which section applies). I suspect a search warrant is required for content but not 100% sure.
Now if they needed a search warrant (which is quite possible, if this was treated like email and less than 180 days old), then it is quite possible they asked for one and got laughed at by the magistrate.
More to the point, it seems that the police must skew towards that attempted 0% risk, which is what starts snowballs like this.
I find it ironic that with all of the talk flying around about nothing being private, a facebook conversation that would potentially exonerate this guy can't be dredged up.
It's hard for me to crystallize my thoughts on what needs to happen here, because the details, have up until this article, been incredibly confusing and contradictory. At the last report, this conversation took place within League of Legends itself. Apparently that wasn't the case. What other details about the information the jury had access to do we not know?
Austin resident here. There is very little right about this case.
He was joking, and his original post included indications of this. Prosecutors intentionally misrepresented and truncated his comments to mislead the Grand Jury.
The arrest warrant issued claimed they found him by driver's license records but he has never had a Texas driver's license.
They failed to protect him, an 18 year old kid, in jail. He has been sexually assaulted.
The state maintains their case against him at this point only to blunt his eventual lawsuit against them.
I don't get it, I thought the USA was a massive litigation centre and you could sue people for millions left right and centre? Are you saying that you can't sue people like that?
I believe tbastos believes that there is little chance the police will be punished. The kid absolutely will bring, and win, a lawsuit if the parent comment is true.
Police officers and prosecutors are immune from personal liability in a suit (the liability instead shifts onto the government). It is very often the case that gross misconduct that costs the government millions in damages will not result in any sort of punishment for the responsible official.
Wow, I didn't realise US police were that bad. After reading this I don't think I could ever feel safe enough to visit the US. Sounds like you'd have a better chance of getting justice in an African dictatorship where at least the dont-rape-me bribe would be affordable. Tourists really should be warned about this, because it's not the image the US tourist boards present to us at all.
In fairness, as an EU citizen, I'd say most justice systems the world over are just shit.
Sure, the rich and connected will get all sorts of rights and protections, but if you are Mr. Nobody (and worse, you were not born and bred in the specific area where you're being accused) then some sort of abuse is almost guaranteed. Look at the news in places like UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Canada: people "spontaneously" die in police custody, are killed in the street while unarmed, spend years in jail for crimes they didn't commit, spend months in custody before even being accused of anything... and these are just the ones we hear about. My father occasionally had to look after kids who had some brush up with the Law, in Italy; long story short, once you enter The System, you can kiss goodbye to any sense of respect, self-worth or personal rights.
Sure, there are problems everywhere, but you cannot compare the level of bullshit in the states. Just look at the statistics on Wikipedia, and the many documentaries on YouTube and newspaper articles on it.
Yeah if you're poor and vulnerable you're screwed anywhere in the capitalist world. But in the states you're screwed even if you are middle class (absurd bails) and have a good lawyer, because the government is so over its head that they will jail you with fabricated evidence and then give you no chance of justice.
True, the UK is not much better than the US. But otherwise many countries in Europe are incomparably safer. If not because of more reasonable justice systems, just because people are more laid back and sane here than in the states.
>just because people are more laid back and sane here than in the states.
Are they? I distinctly remember the post-riot reactions in London last summer: people got sentenced to years of imprisonment for posting banter on Facebook and Twitter, with full support from mainstream public opinion. Because we're all cool until you touch private property, and then it's HANG THE THIEF! And if you think that's just Brits being Brits, I can show you the electoral results of people like LePen, Wilders, Haider, and the laws this pressure produced...
Do not make the error of confusing historical development with the essence of man: we might look more laid back and "civilised" because of accidents of history that bestowed us a set of marginally saner laws and a bit more perspective (and recent memory), but underneath we're as brutal as anyone else on the planet.
The riots were in 2011. The punishments were for a different thing. Still, these were really bad punishments. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/aug/16/uk-riots-four-year... . The UK policing approach is more of a middle-class order authoritarianism, "we want to stop this rotten bunch of oiks" rather than "my ego and promotion are founded on jailing anyone I can find", which seems to be the case in much of the US.
Nobody was nabbed for just bantering, though, as it seems this kid was, although "just a restraining order" suggests some queries. But knowing what the US cops are (in)capable of, I'm appalled again by the system where they want to put as many people in jail as possible. This was, however, excessive.
A note on rhetoric: I'm glad you mentioned this because I'd forgotten about those convictions. But please Do give links as justification, because you do your arguments a disservice by loose argumentationm and hyperbole.
A single counter-example from a single country in Europe on the basis of a looser version of double jeopardy protections does not have any bearing on a claim that many countries in Europe (of ~50 or so) are safer, though. It does not even demonstrate that Italy isn't safer.
I'm not going to defend the Italian justice system - it's indefensible. But it's a fact that it is MUCH more likely to go to prison in the US than in Europe - just read the numbers.
Yeah, but in the US, if you are white and middle class, prison is something that happens to someone else. Look at the numbers.
The US prison-industrial complex can't be legitimately defended. The way it targets black and poor people in order to provide profit to private parties is something one might otherwise think only happened in China.
But this case is abuse of a whole different kind and on a level which is strikes at issues beyond the norm/
I've been to an Africa country. A friend was almost robbed by a member of an ethnic minority. The police brought the suspect in, beat the crap out of him until he confessed. My friends were down the hall while they heard the police beat him up and heard his cries. In the 1990s during the Rwandan Genocide, neighbours turned on neighbours and a million people were hacked to death with machetes.
Guess what also isn't typical? The treatment of this kid by police prosecutors in the US. The person he replied to sees one isolated incident in Texas, easily the most ass-backwards state in terms of morals and common sense, and assumes it's the case for the entire country of 310 million people.
I'm visiting friends there for the second half of March, and one of the first things you're told by online guides, etc. is "don't ask people to talk about the genocide, or what ethnic group they are from".
There was a horrific series of events with long-term repercussions and damage, no one wants to see anything like that again, and no one wants to discuss such things in idle chitchat with tourists.
But we can find plenty of videos of US police doing exactly that.
Here's a video of police killing a man. He starts off calmly answering their questions, obeying their stupid instructions. He gets frustrated ar their bullshit. They beat him to the ground and sit on him and yell at him to stop struggling. He can't breathe - of course he's going to struggle. More police turn up. They asume the original officers are in the right and this guy is viole t on drugs, so they sit on him too.
BTW, "Beyond the Gates" (aka "Shooting Dogs") is another film about the Rwandan Genocide, but much more violent than "Hotel Rwanda". It also touches on a bit more of the white/black racism as well.
I think you are referring to Hotel Rwanda. No, I didn't. I am hopeful that this is a joke and not an attempt to disprove my point or a demonstration of your range of knowledge on the subject.
This is not an isolated case either. I don't mean facebook-comment-wise, but rather wtf-wise. From Internet, through airports and car stops to interacting with random strangers. Lot's of horrific stories where you end up in the justice system, while done absolutely nothing that breaks the law or would endanger someone in any way.
But maybe because the US is so big it's bound to happen sometimes? I don't know, but USA is certainly not on my want-to-visit list (though it's on a wish-to-visit along with Pakistan).
America is pretty good -- don't anecdotes from the internet says deter you.
We're a collection of states that each are allowed to do things more or less their own way. Texas is one of the states with serious issues surrounding illegal immigration, income, and education, but has about the same economic power as Canada.
> America is pretty good -- don't anecdotes from the internet says deter you.
It's not merely anecdotes; there's plenty of hard data. The US locks up more people in absolute numbers than any country in the world, including China, which has 4 times the population and a totalitarian government. Per capita, the only countries with more inmates are a handful of tiny Carribean islands, I believe.
Law enforcement is structurally not being held accountable. Stories about police officers killing or tazering unarmed and even disabled people abound, usually followed up by a story that nobody got charged with any wrongdoing (except maybe the victim).
In talks online, I notice that a lot of Americans are afraid of the police. Tons of websites warn not to say anything to the police. The message that the police cannot be trusted is everywhere.
This is not the image of healthy, democratic, rule of law. It's a police state.
This is simply not true! Could you please provide a quote from where you got this in the article, because there seems to be no mention of it.
My grandparents were lucky enough to survive the Stalinist regime but many of our family didn't. There's no reliable numbers of how many where imprisoned by Stalin and, even worse, how many died in prison camps. For the latter, even the most conservative estimates are in the millions.
"Robertson drew attention to one of the great scandals of American life. "Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today," writes the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik. "Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America--more than 6 million--than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."
Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That's not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and Britain--with a rate among the highest--has 153. Even developing countries that are well known for their crime problems have a third of U.S. numbers. Mexico has 208 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, and Brazil has 242. As Robertson pointed out on his TV show, The 700 Club, "We here in America make up 5% of the world's population but we make up 25% of the [world's] jailed prisoners.""
Obviously rates are more relevant than absolute numbers for policy analysis, here. But yeah, our prison population is absolutely enormous.
Did they also kill fewer people? Please shut the fuck up and stop cherry-picking comments to support your bullshit.
>Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America--more than 6 million--than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height
Oh wow, really? Maybe the USSR never surpassed it because people kept fucking dying in the Gulag.
Nobody is suggesting that Stalin was not one of the worst totalitarian tyrants ever. He is personally responsible for more deaths than anyone else, and possibly even Hitler.
And yet, somehow, the US manages to lock more people in prison than this totalitarian scumbag. That should be food for thought for anyone with half a brain.
I guess we're grasping for distractions now, so what about hte half a million people the United States killed in Iraq, eh???? What about the millions of people who'll die as a result of US engineered climate change?
Of course, none of these diversions have anything to do with, you know, the topic at hand.
Yep, they sure liked it.
The above is an expression we use a lot in my own country (Romania): "Our country is great, too bad it's inhabited".
It can easily be extended to any country, imho. :)
I've heard the expression (in Spanish), but referring to the particular people living there (and other countries). "America is great, too bad it's full of Americans" (change to any country that you want to mock)
The US is vastly better than many parts of the world and we get a disproportionate amount of attention on our ills because we're an economic powerhouse that does many things. The country is a collection of states that each have their boons and drawbacks.
Texas is near (or at) last in public education. Don't make public threats to kill children in a state that might not understand or care about sarcastic context.
According to what metric? They rank in the the top 25% in US News rankings, 14th in Quality Counts rankings, and have one of the highest high school completion rates in the country.
I would imagine that Austin in particular is probably over average compared to much of the rest of the state due to the number of colleges in the area and significant tech sector.
Seconding this. The north is one of the safest areas for foreigners. I would give Chitral, Swat and especially Peshawar a miss right now, but Neelum Valley, Skardu, etc, and north are all fine.
You didn't? Stories about attrocious behaviour by US police, and the sorry state of the US prison system, not to mention the fact that the US locks up more people than any other country in the world, have received a lot of attention here and elsewhere.
To me, the worst one was the prison that bribed a judge to convict more children.
No, the relentless compelling evidence that pours out in torrents day after day without respite is what makes it look like it is corrupt. This story is shocking, but it is not surprising in the slightest, and there is a reason for that.
As of writing this, there's more than one story of the system going wrong in the US on the frontpage of HN alone (How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help - https://medium.com/p/9f53ef6a1c10/ is the other one; I believe it was posted after your comment)
If it was one story, it wouldn't be so scary. What is scary is the ongoing stream of horrible abuses of power that gets reported.
Especially because so many of them include aftermaths where nobody gets held accountable.
> So one story of the justice system going wrong in the USA means the whole system is systemically corrupt?
Have you read the post you're responding to? What a single story means or doesn't mean has ceased being relevant ages ago. It's systemic. It's normal. The corruption has become mundane.
Don't be a complete Ass. The US is a a big place, really big and there are vastly different types of states and situations. Any country in the world has fucked up abuses of power, name where you live and I guarantee that an example exists. Comparing Maine (where I live, which has the lowest crime rate and rate of prisoners per 100,000 in the US) to Texas is like comparing Switzerland to Russia based on the size and population levels and distance between. Note that Texas has some great areas it's just to show that they are extremely different to other states and it's not a valid comparison to Russia.
Note that though Maine has the lowest incarceration rate of the US, globally they're only average. Most countries in Europe still have a lower incarceration rate, for example.
And every other US state has a higher incarceration rate than Maine. Many 3 times as high, some 5, one even 10 times as high. The US as a whole has by far the highest incarceration rate of the whole world.
Maybe Maine is the exception as the only sane state in this regard. As a whole, the situation in the US is attrocious.
However, Maine is home to greatest number of horror stories by Stephen King, by far. Clearly, your chances of being mauled by a rabid St. Bernard or vampire or nameless evil is far greater than in the other States.
Then again, you could look at other metrics and reach a different conclusion...
Agreed the issue needs to be fixed but my point is that the whole of the US isn't the same and painting the entire us as a dangerous place to go is ridiculous and unfair.
But even the safest state is still roughly comparable with the least safe country in Europe. Yes, there's lots of variation, just as there is anywhere else, but on the whole, incarceration in the US is just plain crazy.
Maine has an epidemic of prison rape, just as Texas does. Although there are many issues where it's fair to make a distinction between different localities, this is a national problem.
You're cherry picking. Maine has half the population of Chicago. More importantly, Texas is 20x the size of Maine, and represents over 8% of the population of the US.
Certainly I'm cherry picking, but that's the point. It's not that Texas is inherently bad but that it's ridiculous to compare all of the US with one broad stroke. Maine and Texas and Chicago are vastly different places and the US shouldn't be painted with broad strokes.
Texas is where nearly 1 out of 11 US citizens live, and there's nothing that I see about this case that's unique to Texas. You can narrow your criticism to his house or his bedroom, and exclude Texas from blame too, if it's important to be that reductive.
The unavoidable fact is that what happened in Texas happened in the US. If Texas started segregating lunch counters and water fountains again, it would be legitimate to criticize the US for that, too.
edit: To be more specific, why are you blaming Texas for what happened in Travis County, Texas?
I'm not blaming Texas or anything else. I'm saying that the commenter, said that the US was too dangerous to visit because of the justice system. I was pointing out that the US has vastly different state with vastly different systems and painting the entire US as the same is an incorrect statement.
Could this have happened in Maine? Sure though it's vastly more likely to happen in Texas or other state with a higher rate of in-prisonment.
When someone says, hey, the US is a really terrible place, saying "But this one (or five) states in the US aren't quite as awful!" is making their point for them.
edit: I do not agree with the U.S. justice system being third world level; I just don't think the differences in states are relevant here when the average across all of them is so terrible on this particular metric.
It's funny how when someone lands on the Moon, then it's because of the greatness of being American. If some American person or group does something bad, it has everything to do with being such a heterogeneous country.
This probably has more to do with being Human than being American. Someone would probably bring up some analogy about the Olympics and nationalism as a retort. The thing is, though, when the US wins the most gold medals during the Olympics, they conveniently gloss over the fact that it is a first world nation with 300 million people. When something bad occurs, it is precisely because they are 300 million people - "we are so many and so different", "that would never work over here, we are too many and too different"
That would be valid if we were talking about some criminal justice program that Maine or any other state shared with Texas. Kinda like how the entire United States submits athletes to the make up the Olympic teams. Or how engineers and scientists from the entire country made up the Nasa team. The ENTIRE point was that Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Alaska, Florida, and of course Texas have separate, though similar Criminal justice programs. Nice straw-man attempt though.
A Norwegian tourist was sentenced to seven years in prison in Arizona for accidentally running over some guy's foot with his car. The incident happened after he took a wrong turn onto a one-way street and was about to turn around, when he was crowded by a group of people at a nearby music festival, apparently angry with his traffic violation. One of them punched him in the face through the car window, upon which he sped off (accidentally running over a foot in the process).
The charge was assault with a lethal weapon (the car), the case went to trial and he was convicted. It's a circus.
Any state south of the Mason-Dixon line is portrayed as a cartoonish land of religious fanatics, racism, and overreaction.
In truth it is not exactly so, but I personally wouldn't want to live in any of those places. I probably wouldn't be happy living in the mid-west either though.
It generally holds true that these sorts of things can happen in any state now. If you 'threaten' to shoot up a school (no matter how jokingly) you're likely to get reamed for it.
Context no longer matters... There is a zero tolerance policy on certain words and ideas now it appears.
Lived in the south my entire life (currently in Nola).
There's definitely an I don't know...afterglow effect? with this stereotype at play in the south today. It certainly used to be highly isolated culture with it's own weird problems ("fanatics, racism, and overreaction").
These days though thanks to television, the internet, decades of immigration etc. it's pretty much the rest of the US...with better weather.
Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia - fear these places.
Well, if you're going to paint with such a broad brush, go ahead and list the other 38. I hear there are bad people in San Francisco, Madison, Boise, Olympia, Reading and Topeka too.
Then you should start listing Canadian provinces, because surely they've got some bad apples. And don't forget Mexico, since they've had issues with murderous drug cartels. At that point you should also mention the bloodthirsty populations of Central America as well as the black-hearted people of Iceland.
Really, I think only the Moon is reasonably safe but the place has gone downhill since 1969.
I grew up in Louisiana. The police here are just plain awful. But as young adults we were always warned about dealing with and avoiding dealing with police in Mississippi. Police in the deep south are not the same as police in other places.
I have lived in Georgia all of my life. It is fine. Cases like these are outliers and can happen anywhere. Look at what happened in Illinois when someone recorded a cop with a helmet cam. These types of generalizations have no place on HN.
I have traveled a lot. I have met small minded bigots all over. I grew up on a moderate sized city in the deep south. There is still a very small population of bigots in almost any rural area. No need to down play it, this is a very small amount of the population. It is still a problem, to some extent: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2428103/Majority-Ame...). A few more generations and people won't even have living memories of Jim Crow. It takes time to heal wounds like this and that is very certainly the trend (improvement).
Oh fuck off, you obviously haven't been to half of these states, especially considering you dumped New Mexico into a list with Mississippi. How that would ever make sense is beyond me.
What would you even be fearing? Burritos and Barbeque?
I wouldn't fear anything. But I'm white. If I were not white? I'd fear the corrupt cops, the corrupt legal system, and the corrupt banking system to name a few.
yeah, I'm from New Mexico too. Grew up in Farmington, lived in Las Cruces a year, Albuquerque has always sort of been home base. Still, I lived in SLC for a decade too and I've been in SF for 4 years now, and I've spent a lot of time in West Oakland. I also have a good chunk of family in Louisiana. Guess what? Cops are retarded everywhere. In NYC they stop and frisk you for being a minority on a Friday night, and in the Bay Area they just kill you on BART. Of course, these things happen occasionally but pretending like New Mexico (especially from that list) is some sort of place where minorities aren't welcome and overflowing of racism (notice Oklahoma wasn't even on the list? Trail of tears anyone?) is probably the silliest thing I've ever heard.
I wouldn't put New Mexico in that company, and much of Virginia isn't too bad, but yeah.
I think it's important to remember a fact of humanity: you're generally safer on familiar ground, around people who are similar to yourself. It can be very interesting, exciting, and rewarding to be "the foreigner", but at the same time you should never forget when you're in that position.
Of course one of the horrible things about Texas is it does this sort of thing to actual Texans, in addition to other people. It's really an indictment of the people of the state: could you form a decent jury, judiciary, legislature, or police force if it had to be made up of Texans?
I think it's important to remember a fact of humanity: you're generally safer on familiar ground, around people who are similar to yourself. It can be very interesting, exciting, and rewarding to be "the foreigner", but at the same time you should never forget when you're in that position.
This is generally true. However, the United States is a multi ethnic country. So the question is, does this statement apply to all ethnicities, everywhere? The fact is, for a large number of Americans, they are "the foreigner" exactly in that position most of the time.
> It's really an indictment of the people of the state: could you form a decent jury, judiciary, legislature, or police force if it had to be made up of Texans?
It wouldn't be hard to find prejudiced ignoramuses who would say the same about the people of any state (or religion, or ethnic group, or occupation).
Vanderbilt
Duke
UNC
Rice
Georgia Tech
Virginia Tech
University of Virginia
That's a partial list.
PLACES TO BE FEARED! It's legitimately damaging to the American South to perpetuate stereotypes like this. It makes smart people want to leave, or never go in the first place. I've lived in Memphis Tennessee for my entire life and I can guarantee you that it would be a better place if people didn't spew closed minded horse-shit like this.
I was hoping to live in some of these places in the future. Would you mind clarifying why the states on this list are especially bad rather than others?
I live in Alabama and it's a beautiful state. You are always within 6-8 hours of driving from a beach or mountains. The state undergoes three major geological changes as you go from North to South, leaving some really nice, natural scenery as a result. I'm originally from Huntsville, where the majority of rocket science was fostered and learned in America. I believe that there is an area in this region that holds the highest number of PhDs in the country. Huntsville is chock full of engineers and thus schooling tends to pride itself on its math and science curriculum - offering more opportunities because of sponsorships from local engineering firms like Boeing, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Adtran, and many more.
There's this trope that Alabama (and most of the South) is a fucked up, backwards, redneck, inbred place afraid of all things change, and that just isn't true. There are episodes of each of those things - just like in California or New York. It's nice getting off of work and playing basketball out in your driveway, then enjoying a beer with all of your neighbors outside as it turns from dusk to dark. Generally people are nicer here and I try my best to be as well.
I think Alabama's a great state to live in. I also think people give in to regional stereotypes way more than they should.
Most of it comes down to the fact that you have extremely geographically isolated people. Communities in the mountains of the Carolina's for instance may not even have a bank or a post office. These people are extremely paranoid and fearful of change, and thus they elect politicians that share their views and that, worse, feed into them with religious and political rhetoric about how the bad man with dark skin is going to take away all the things they care for most.
My entire life. I've met some of the most viciously racist people that exist. And not just poor and uneducated people. Wealthy, educated people as well. There is an institutionalized racism that permeates most of the south. Not all southerners are that way. Some of us try to lift the south up into the 21st century. But it's a hard fight. And the resistance to change is strong.
But the Western USA is much more geographically isolated. Slavery broke the entire nation, and while much of the rest of the nation has recovered, in important ways the South is still broken.
As someone who grew up in the South, I would humbly submit that you have nothing more to fear visiting the aforementioned states than any of the other 38. There are many beautiful places to visit and friendly people to meet.
So far as I know New Mexico and Arizona aren't part of "The South" either culturally or geographically. If it was that simple, I wouldn't have asked the question.
To be fair, this seems like a real outlier. I read court cases for fun (IANAL) and very rarely do you see cases like this come up. For the most part, most police officers I have known are respectable, decent, responsible individuals.
There are bad apples, of course. But this case is horrible, but it isn't just the police. The District Attorney's office in this case was probably responsible for more of the mess than the police department. It is the DA's office that decides whether to charge the alleged offender, is responsible for working with the police to build a case, etc.
This story is so full of warning signs of an out-of-control prosecutor that it is beyond outrage. Ever wonder why they couldn't get the full words from Facebook? Because Facebook wouldn't give it to them? More likely because a judge wouldn't approve their request based on the evidence they had. The decision to push ahead in that case is entirely the DA's call.
The police in the US are generally speaking pretty good. I don't fault them. You just have to respect the fact that anywhere criminal investigation is about coming up with a good narrative, so it's better for everyone if you don't say too much.
Our problem though is with prosecutors, who, unlike police, can't get sued over crap like this and who keep getting handed more power by things like mandatory sentencing guidelines....
Exactly! I think I can only visit the states again after I'm married and with kids, to go to Disneyland... it seems the only safe venture. I mean if you're single, go to a club and get into a fight, that would probably be enough to make your life hell already... going there is like russian roulette
And why did you assume I would be the one to pick a fight? Even though I'm a peaceful person who never ever assaulted anyone, I've been assaulted several times for no reason, and in different countries. Friends of the aggressor can testify against you and then you're in trouble. I picked club fights as an example, but the point is that bad luck can put innocent people in trouble with the law in any setting...
There are 300 million people in the U.S. They collectively have hundreds of millions if not mord of interactions with the law each year. Outlier events that happen one in a million times will happen hundreds of times a year in the U.S. and be broadcast at the speed of light around the internet.
In much of the world, criminals get away with their actions at a much higher rate, so its not necessarily a sensible comparison. Compare the U.S. to the U.K., two culturally similar countries. The U.S. has a bit under 5x the incarceration rate. But it also has a bit under 4x the intentional homicide rate. Manchester, ostensibly the most dangerous large city in the U.K., had 35 homicides in the whole metro of 2.7 million people. Wilmington, DE has 20-25 in a typical year, for a city of 70,000 people.
So yeah, we put more people in jail. We also have more reason to.
Just a thought, isn't putting your criminals through your jail system at least partly to blame for your high level of homicide? I mean, I'm no expert but it would seem that if you brutalise people for infractions, then release them into a society that will not now employ them but has lots of guns, that perhaps it might make life a bit more dangerous for everyone?
You should also stay inside your house at all times. Because if you go outside lightning could strike you. Or maybe you'll get run over while walking the dog.
Every single person who is complicit in the mental and physical (he was raped in prison, people -- and the fact that some believe that prison rape is part of the punishment need their effing head checked) trauma should be fired. Disgusting.
The fact that they don't even have the context of what was said, and yet they're still trying to hit him with a felony is beyond ludicrous. I'm honestly awestruck that a prosecutor could think that this is a trophy they want to earn.
Funnily enough, situations like this (and the various ethical issues) are the reason I decided to leave my law degree. I can't reconcile my own morals and ethics with the reality of the justice system.
This is disturbing. They arrest the guy and sentenced to ten years in jail with just a screenshot of a Facebook comment as a starting evidence. It's kinda puzzling to me why didn't they manage to check the whole thread? I think it's simple enough and contacting Facebook for it is not needed.
What's the topic of the thread? We don't know.
Edit: Let's also not disregard the fact that the screenshot can be all made up. They can't find the thread. Maybe it was edited, or created through Photoshop. I think it's fairly easy.
They arrest the guy and sentenced to ten years in jail with just a screenshot of a Facebook comment as a starting evidence.
I don't believe he has been sentenced to anything. He was given an offer of 10 years probation, which his lawyer bizarrely spouts off against as if deals are not the common actions in the justice system.
In any case, he confessed to what was stated, and despite the spin now that it was a false confession, in earlier versions of reports about this he freely admitted that he said what he said...but that he purportedly followed it up later by an lol that made it all okay.
It is actually interesting seeing how people sway in opinion about things. In the whole Flappy Bird fiasco, many were calling for the heads of those who "threatened the life" of the author, even though the threats were almost universally clearly absurd or satirical. Yet in this case it is an outrage that the police followed up on threats against children (shortly after Sandy Hook), and then when they discovered a confluence of concerning behaviors (suicide threats, restraining orders, bizarre behavior) they pursued actual charges.
Should people be raped in jail? Of course they shouldn't. No criminal should. Though it's interesting that many on here believe that he is not like those other criminals, when the jails are stuffed with non-violent offenders who likewise shouldn't face sexual assaults.
Should people face absurd sentences about thought crimes? Of course not.
But what you say matters. Words have consequences. This whole fallback on some rote "Freedom of Speech!" thing is devolving from a civilized behavior.
EDIT: I see that we're not looking for a rational, mature discussions. More of a rah rah rah mass outrage.
Oh, don't be such a martyr. Sometimes the fault is your own. In this case, your description of the course of events displays a good understanding of what happened, and yet you present it in a way that is quite deceptive. If you want a better response, try being more even-handed.
> In any case, he confessed to what was stated, and despite the spin now that it was a false confession, in earlier versions of reports about this he freely admitted that he said what he said...but that he purportedly followed it up later by an lol that made it all okay.
This reminds me of a courtroom scene in My Cousin Vinny. Upon being told that he was being charged for the murder of the sheriff, one of the main characters exclaims in disbelief, "What?! I shot the sheriff?!" And then in trial, the prosecutor asks him, "Did you not tell police, 'I shot the sheriff'?" That movie was a comedy, but you're seriously trying to make this argument. You're acting like a silly parody of a prosecutor. Agreeing upon the words used does not mean this guy "confessed."
And yes, the fact that it wasn't actually a threat does make it OK. Why wouldn't it? What interest does the law have in punishing people who aren't actually issuing threats? Should Alan Rickman be afraid of punishment for all the villainous lines he's delivered on camera?
Your analogy adds nothing but noise to the conversation.
The lawyer for the accused never recants either the confession, or that his client said what he is reported to have said. In typical defense lawyer posturing, instead he tries to draw doubt about the metadata around it. And for good reason given that the accused has repeatedly admitted, to the police, prosecutors, and even the media, having written exactly what was reported, but now we're to pretend that maybe it was a different person, or that Facebook messages were doctored?
Note that the prosecutor almost certainly has the messages from Facebook, and the fact that the police went on the early variant is utterly irrelevant.
What interest does the law have in punishing people who aren't actually issuing threats?
Since you like anecdotes, imagine that someone walks around pretending to punch random bystanders, but he pulls up at the last second. Hilarious, right? Now they have no intention of actually hitting, and can even point at a history of being the sort of person that pretends to hit people.
Is it assault?
Yes, of course it is. The recipients of the threat reasonably believed in its validity, so what the perpetrator thought is irrelevant. This is the same reason why bomb threats, threats against persons, etc, are prosecuted, despite this contrived notion throughout this thread that they need to prove that one has the means and intention of carrying it out.
Freedom of speech is one freedom. But as with most freedoms that need to be balanced between people, your freedoms end where my nose begins. Your freedoms to express violent threats ends where there are people who might reasonably assume them to be legitimate, for instance. This is the case in the US and almost all Western countries, so it's odd seeing so many seemingly thinking this is protected speech. It isn't.
> The lawyer for the accused never recants either the confession, or that his client said what he is reported to have said. In typical defense lawyer posturing, instead he criticizes the metadata around it. For good reason given that the accused has repeatedly admitted, to the police, prosecutors, and even the media, having written exactly what was reported, but now we're to pretend that maybe it was a different person, or that Facebook messages were doctored?
Again I ask: Should actors be liable for threats they've delivered in a movie? Surely not. Why? Because of what you call "metadata," which is commonly called "context." We know that these actors were not sincere because they said the words in the context of a movie. The idea that context doesn't matter is positively absurd. Human communication is hugely reliant on context for meaning, and humor even more so.
> Since you like anecdotes, imagine that someone walks around pretending to punch random bystanders, but he pulls up at the last second. Hilarious, right? Now they have no intention of actually hitting, and can even point at a history of being the sort of person that pretends to hit people.
> Is it assault?
> Yes, of course it is. The recipients of the threat reasonably believed in its validity, so what the perpetrator thought is irrelevant.
Precisely — it is normal to assume that you are being punched when somebody swings his fist at you. But when somebody in the middle of a lighthearted conversation responds to the statement "You're crazy" with "I'm totally CRAZY — in fact, I'm so crazy I'm going to $CRAZY_THING," it is not necessarily the case that they are actually going to do $CRAZY_THING. If he had said "fling poop," would you have actually assumed he was going to fling poop?
The objection here is that there is no reasonable belief in the validity of this so-called terrorist threat. The mere fact that somebody said the words "I am going to shoot up a kindergarten" doesn't mean he is actually declaring an intention to do so. I just said them right now. Are you going to report me? The rest of this comment is, after all, just metadata.
This country has its fair share of over zealous prosecutors and out of control cops. We need a way to track these events to the individual to make it easier to identify patterns. When deputy Erik Gelhaus shot and killed an innocent 13 year old boy here in Santa Rosa I tried to find out if he had a history of violent interactions with the public. That's when I realized no one seemed to be tracking these events. There should be a service where I can look up the prosecutors in this case and see if they have a history of this type of behavior. I should be able to look up any cop and find their history of violent interactions with the public if there is one. How can we trust these people with power if we can't hold them accountable?
Agreed. And that is where I believe our country has gone so wrong. There are few checks and balances against a run amok justice system. There is little transparency to people who destroy lives as a part of their daily job.
Out of curiosity: if someone hacked this kid's account and posted those comments, and if the legal system is considering the Facebook comments to be his words, what recourse does he have? How does he demonstrate that the speech wasn't his?
What do you do when you're in custody and the police deny you access to your lawyer as appears to be the case here. Or moves you and provides a puppet lawyer, as also appears to be the case here. Or simply incarcerate you without charge for an extended period as also seems to be the case here. Do you keep quite when those incarcerating you [by action or inaction] set you up to be raped. At what point do you give in and say anything to try and make it stop?
If USA has an actual justice system that cares for due process I can't see how anyone involved in these actions can retain a position of any authority within that system.
You still don't admit any fault or guilt! It never helps. They only have you admit things to put you in prison. There is no other reason. "Proving" you're innocent to the cop is not admitted in court anyway. Admitting you're guilty to the cop is.
He doesn't. And proving hacking would be nearly impossible. A gifted hacker wouldn't leave evidence. Or at least no evidence that a normal investigator will find. And simply saying its a possibility doesn't matter without evidence. Thus, it's too expensive and time consuming to even consider.
What if he was hacked by a stupid hacker? Surely facebook keep logs which can be colsulted by the police. What IP address was the comments from? Where were you when the comment was made etc.
I think anyone agrees that this whole situation has been blown out of proportion on a massive scale. But threatening to shoot up a school, in the light of recent events... really? What if he actually DID shoot up a school, and afterwards people discovered that authorities WERE warned?
People need to realize that what you post on the internet can be interpreted different than what you actually meant. Besides, threatening with an act of terrorism is never funny, and always a bad idea. My El Al (Israeli airline) flight was delayed once because some prankster thought it was funny to say 'I have a bomb' to the flight attendant while boarding. He was thrown in jail and had to pay for delaying the flight.
In this case, the punishment doesn't fit the crime. I do wish people would think twice before making threats as a joke, though.
The problem is that it's not a crime to be an idiot.
A lonely teenager who's already angsty gets into a flame war with an internet troll. That happens every day. And much worse things are said between people.
What happened here is a dumb kid was dumb, and either the troll or some busy-body made the call to the cops. And, more importantly, an over-achieving DA with aspirations of being a district court judge thought this case could make her career - "Stopped a terrorist threat" would be a great line in her website, and she will get a whole bunch of publicity down in not-shit-ever-really-happensville Texas. Meaning she will be able to use this to campaign on later if she prevails.
None of this is about the idiot kid. It's all about political ambition and cops doing what they do best - terrorize the weak and the innocent.
There's also a judge who deserves a heaping portion of blame for abject failure to hold the cops to any reasonable standard of 4th amendment rigor. What probably happened is they got a bunch of classified information from the FBI and hastily constructed a very poor "parallel construction" which they are now seeing fall apart.
Actually it is often a crime to be an idiot, and it's quite appropriate. For example, in OP's case of the delayed El Al flight, yes it's a crime to declare to someone who might reasonably believe you that you're bringing a bomb on board. And so yeah, also, only months after Newtown and Aurora to declare that you're going to shoot up a school can be a crime -- although 8-10 years is beyond all proportion and reasonableness. But, especially if you have a history of expressing suicidal and other violent sentiments online, that's a quite reasonable thing for someone to think.
I'd agree that his timing was a bit off, and he didn't land his punchline. But being a failed comedian and telling off-color jokes is, luckily, not a crime. Look at all of those dead baby jokes.
So yeah, making a joke about a bomb or something might ruffle some feathers. But how many terrorists tell a plane full of people that they have a bomb BEFORE the people actually get on the plane? None of them. Because that's a stupid thing to do.
I don't even know how to respond if you don't understand the difference between making a joking threat while on stage at a comedy club, and making one when stepping onto a plane. Again given his previous comments and the picture of his personality given from his profile, it sounds like it might have been believable. It's at least not as clear cut as you're making it seem.
I mean, otherwise we can extend this just joking defense to anything. Mail baking powder to your congress man in an envelope with a note saying "this is antrax" -- what will you tell the FBI when they come for you? "What kind of idiot thinks I'd really be sending anthrax? Can't you guys take a joke?"
At what point can people make reasoned, defensive assumptions about the intentions of people who express threats?
There's a difference between a guy who went through a body scanner and a fleet of sniffer dogs and a guy who sends a package that goes through essentially no security (though you would think these guys would employ better security simply as they are higher profile people who get lots of threats).
And I'm not saying that threats shouldn't be investigated, or even that exercising your freedom of speech doesn't have consequences (it does and should).
But after they looked into his home life. Spoke to his friends. Tossed his room and spoke with teachers. And still found no actual evidence of a plan to commit a crime. The next step is get into contact with Facebook and get that thread. It wouldn't be hard and I'd assume FB gets this sort of request all the time. They probably have a protocol in place.
I'm saying that just saying that you're going to commit a crime is not the same as doing it. And that an idiot kid who says something on Facebook is not and should not be considered, the same as a billionaire-backed, militarily trained terrorist.
Do some disturbed people make threats on Facebook and then carry them out? Yes they do. And so yes, these things should be investigated thoroughly. But the case here was not investigated, it was rushed and sloppy.
Did the police go get the thread themselves? No.
Did the police get the kid a psych eval? Not that I've seen here anyway.
Did the police do any real investigation? No.
Innocent until proven guilty. That's the way it's supposed to be.
I don't even know how to respond if you don't understand the difference between making a joking threat while on stage at a comedy club, and making one when stepping onto a plane.
While there are obviously differences, I think the joke is fine in both contexts. I think part of the problem is that you are talking about a "joking threat". The point is, the way most people express those jokes, they are clearly not a threat.
Joking about terrorists at airports should be a common thing because it's a natural human reaction to the excesses of airport security. They treat you like a terrorist, so many people joke that they really are terrorists. There's always a big wink-wink that is implied. It is really very sad that so many people feel threatened into restricting their totally harmless and healthy human instincts.
Perhaps part of the reason we're having this discussion at all is that the original story is about a comment on the internet, and it is well known that subtle communicative clues do not convey well over the internet.
So when we evaluate jokes like "Hey, I'm packing a bomb into my suitcase now", I would argue that there is (or should be) no difference between doing that on stage vs. doing that in real life, but there may be a difference when you post it online. Putting a ;-) might be a good idea...
You're right. School spree killers do have a habit to make crazy threats on FB on forehand, though. But yes, fortunately having a deviant sense of humor isn't a crime!
It's not a crime to be an idiot if you are a cop or a judge. This should never have happened, and our system is loaded with rules intended to prevent it. Idiots failed to execute those rules faithfully.
"But threatening to shoot up a school, in the light of recent events... really? "
Yes, absolutely, really. If you are in playground type ranting slanging match, you go of the most extreme things to say, which could cause shock in the recipient. Right now, things like school shootings are the current shock fodder, and well in peoples minds. So people will use that subject. Same with pedophiles and terrorists. And of course, many strands of comedy also use this.
I'd say it depends on the occasion. For instance, when Louis C.K. says something similar while performing a comedy show, it's absolutely clear that he's not actually going to shoot up a school. It's meant to shock his audience. When you're posting these things on the internet to people you probably don't even know in person (so they have no way to know wether you're joking or not), things can get hairy quickly.
I'm sure the person he made the threats to knew he was joking, and thought it would be a good troll to report him to the authorities. Bad taste aside, when you're not 100% certain your 'threat' won't be perceived as such, please don't write them down.
No, it does not depend on the occasion. It depends only whether or not there seemed to be an actual intent to do something terrible.
Teenagers say stupid shit all the time, sometimes just to see if they can out-shock or out-weird their friends. Especially online. The context of the conversation matters.
We have freedom of speech. It's been established that apart from actual threats, or a couple of other instances (defamation, libel), this right is absolute. And this example is comedy, so it is clearly covered.
Your first response to this clear case of injustice amounts to "well it's understandable, we certainly can't blame the authorities for being vindictive idiots who destroyed this kid's life over a throwaway joke."
If enough people did blame the authorities, we wouldn't have the horrible system we have. It wouldn't even have to be a majority; we've made progress in the past based on a principled minority of citizens pulling their heads out of their asses. Since you apply the blame that should go to the "justice" system to its victims instead, you are part of the reason the system does not improve.
Whoa! Jumping to conclusions here! My first reaction was not that it's understandable and that we can't blame authorities. It was more 'we can't put 100% blame on the autorities'. Let me be very clear: I'm 100% pro freedom of speech. Everyone should be allowed to say/post whatever they want, no matter how deranged. Unfortunately, that's just not the reality we live in. The reality is that the US has become a surveillance state, and that you should mind what you post online. My point is that if you post stupid things like this on the internet, you can expect some consequences.
Side note 1: The fact that we're having this conversation shows that it's incredibly difficult to get all nuances of your opinion across over the internet.
Side note 2: Free speech in my opinion is the fact that you CAN say anything you want. It doesn't mean that you SHOULD.
I appreciate that you have a special nuanced opinion about this case, but nuance doesn't right wrongs. Tyranny thrives when people convince themselves that their "correct" behavior will keep them out of the woodchipper.
> But threatening to shoot up a school, in the light of recent events... really? What if he actually DID shoot up a school, and afterwards people discovered that authorities WERE warned?
I'm not sure why this part matters. The prosecutor might be fired, but at least an innocent boy is not raped while waiting for trial? The boy had no means to carry out the threat -- they searched his home. Your scenario works fine for Minority Report, but not in real life.
I agree that every threat should be taken seriously, but there should be sane and quality judgement in the authorities to quickly dismiss false positives.
People will behave goofy. You cannot put the burden on them.
I agree with you. But I think we don't know the whole context of the thread. Let's give him a benefit of the doubt. The thread topic which we don't know is really important in this case.
My creative mind is thinking, what if the topic is like this... "What is the worst thing you imagine that you can't ever do?" And then he replied that way.
Also, I don't get it why didn't manage to see the whole thread? I guess it is sort of publicly available and can be accessed without even contacting the Facebook authorities.
Rappers have collectively made countless graphic threats against people of all walks and ages, to an audience of tens of millions. It's part of the art-form. Eminem and Nicki Minaj have made explicit threats of gun violence that refer to schools. And they're jokes. For some reason they haven't been arrested for it. Context, maybe. First amendment, maybe.
What if one of them does something? Then their lyrics will be dredged and repeated on the news ad nauseam. "How did we not see it coming?" Humans are anxious monkeys. "Oh shit, words! What if there are intentions? What would we have done if he hadn't said words to let us know of his thoughts?"
+1. I'm as liberal as they come, but the guy deserves the weight of the law to come down on him like a ton of bricks for even hinting at considering to shoot kids in a school.
So you're in fact not as liberal as they come. With a view like that you're pretty far from being liberal at all by my account.
Personally, I'd consider a place where you could be convicted for making statements like the ones he did a police state. I say this as a father of a young boy who is at school right now.
I find the very sentiment that this kid deserves the weight of the law to come down on him outright disgusting.
Was it right to investigate? Yes. They might have found someone with a stockpile of weapons getting ready to shoot up the local school or kindergarten - they didn't know the kid or the context of the statements.
But the situation should have changed rapidly once they had searched his home and found nothing, had found nothing else to indicate he was going to actually shoot up a school, and found no evidence of actual planning or specific threats. Have him see a psychologist, maybe. That's about it.
There's a notable difference between writing a book and publishing an announcement that you're going to go on a killing spree. The former is relatively benign, the latter has far too often been done right before a killing spree. The former is done over time, in relative peace; the latter is done in the spur of the moment.
It's like writing the Anarchist's Cookbook about how to make a bomb, and writing a tweet about how you're going to plant a bomb in Boston in a couple minutes. The latter is a direct threat and requires immediate action. Most of the time, it's too late even for that.
Personally, this dude should've known better and restrain his impulsive internet lulz behavior.
>the latter has far too often been done right before a killing spree.
Basic Bayesian approach to probability tells us that this metric of predicting violent events is counter-productive due to a great number of false positives.
You may have good metrics on the number of incidents that were pre-dated with announcements, but you probably have very bad metrics on the number of announcements that were followed by incidents.
There's no way you can make a statement about how strong the link is without that information.
This man's facebook post alone, and especially absent of any kind of access to a gun, are no grounds to assume any actual intent to cause physical harm. Far from it, I would say artists who have a history of violent confrontation, write/sing/rap about stabbing, shooting, or otherwise assaulting other people, and actually are in possession of weapons they could use to do so, could be assumed by any reasonable person to be more guilty of actually having an intent, or at least an overzealous willingness, to cause harm to others.
Is he charged with anything? I only saw a reference to a "terrorist threat", what kind of fucked up country is one that gets you ten years in jail for joking about committing a crime? Don't you actually have to commit the crime to go to prison, usually?
Not at all. Thousands of innocent people at sitting in our jails as we speak. Most of them will never be free. But that's beside the point.
He's not in prison, he's in jail, and there's a big difference.
Depending on the circumstances, you could sit in jail your whole life while you await some technical process to complete. You don't even have to be charged with anything.
Yes, you have to commit the crime - but that can mean a lot of things, including planning or threatening some other crime. Conspiracy is still a crime, for example.
Outside the internet, death threats are serious business and usually a crime, regardless of whether you have the actual intent or ability to kill someone.
Likewise there's that tired old example of yelling fire in a crowded theater (though i don't think that applies here)
On or off the internet, an alleged death threat is subject to considerations of actual intent. Following up a comment with "lol/jk" as he ACTUALLY DID pretty much deflates all the billowy claims of his death threat.
But that is conveniently omitted in popular reporting.
Wasn't the "crowded theater" analogy originally conceived to support the passage of the Espionage Act in America? It might be tired and old now, but was never even legit to begin with.
Not sure why this article doesn't include a seemingly important detail, but it was widely reported that Justin ended his comments with "LOL" and "JK". Mens rea indeed.
They tricked him into admitting that he wrote the FB post by telling him that they'd let him go if he just admitted it. Another example of "Don't talk to cops!"
I'm reasonably sure that bring is a typo for burn.
I mean yes, the way it was written is a valid sentence, but it's an odd one. Assuming a typo makes much more sense, especially with the concluding insult.
Native US English. "I hope you burn in hell" is normal. The comment as written, "I hope you bring in hell you fucking prick", is nonsense. If someone asked me what it meant, I'd be confused, but I wouldn't assume that "bring" was a typo for "burn".
The city was worried about a real possibility of shooting. So they searched his house and found nothing. They realized he wasn't a real threat. Just a jerk.
But they also wanted to send a message, loud and clear, to society: if you make jokes like this, you will suffer the consequences.
So they left him in jail. They set an illegally high bond. They manipulated this gullible boy into giving them a reason to move him to a worse jail, where they knew he would be raped. When it happened, they feigned surprise.
Sure, there were good intentions. They wanted to discourage the kind of joking that puts people into a state of panic.
But they went about it extremely unethically, immorally, and most likely illegally. I've gone to jail, I've been through the US court system, they're very manipulative and this is how they work. It's not right.
Actual threats, stalking, and intimidation do exist. The problem here isn't that threats don't happen, it's that anyone with half a brain can see that this conversation wasn't a serious threat.
>Prosecutors say they don't have the entire thread — instead, they have three comments on a cell-phone screenshot.
There's so many things that make this situation _ridiculous_, but this takes the cake. I would have thought that in a case dealing with a few sentences, the full context of those sentences would be important.
I've been aware of this story for a while now and it always boggled my mind. But after reading this, there's some very troubling things going on that I didn't even know about.
Hope he can get out from under all this, recover, and move on with his life.
Facebook in the headline gets readers, usually i would agree that using the name to spread the words is heinous, but the crimes against this kid are worse
Although he's an idiot for posting such comments, the way the US police and district attorney's have behaved is unbelievable. This guy is clearly innocent but they seem hellbent on getting a prosecution. I see cases such as this much more often on HN recently and it feels as if the entire US justice system is totally fucked up and completely missing the real targets: the criminals.
Couldn't agree more. Community service is great for young first time non-violent offenders. It lets people know that what they did was taken seriously without screwing up their lives.
Is it a direct threat if one doesn't have the means to carry it out? For example if I say I'm going to run you over in my car but I don't have a car, nor access to a car, doesn't that make it an empty threat. Context of course is vital to establish the force, if any, behind such a comment.
First of all, 'people' do not get to decide whether this is a direct threat that needs punishment. Judges of laws make that call.
We have rules for a reason. The police broke them and this accused kid is suffering for it. There is no justification for putting him in jail just because someone thought they might feel threatened. There were multiple breakdowns in the legal system that should have protected him from illegal arrest and prosecution but comments like this make it seem ok to turn a blind eye.
He's never been convicted of anything. Why the rush to punish?
I'm ignoring all the pre-conviction stuff. It's boring because it is blindingly obvious that people should have access to a humane legal system.
The more interesting discussion, to me, is "assume 'Bob' makes a clear and direct threat of violence against a school, and is found guilty in a fair trial. Should 'Bob' receive punishment, and if so what?"
But it wasn't even a direct threat. Or a vague threat. It was obviously a joke. The "AND WATCH THE BLOOD RAIN DOWN AND EAT THEIR HEARTS" makes this crystal clear, in case it didn't appear to be clear enough from the first sentence that this was the case. I thought this was glaringly obvious.
I'm almost afraid to have a Facebook account if they are taken this seriously by authorities. If someone got a hold of my account and posted horrible things, I'd be devastated.
I think they meant that they neither found evidence that he was a lunatic, nor any guns (i.e. not only did he not have the mental state for carrying out a shooting, he did not even have the means). I think either in his speech or during editing the conjunction was accidentally dropped. At least, that was my reading of it.
Well nobody today thinks twice about posting something on the internet, especially youth, and while they should, it's still OK, because it's the way social messaging and posting works, and everybody else should be more or less OK with that too.
10 years for trolling is way over the top, just fine him already and let him go.
Quite. I'm always shocked that people make jokes about this in American TV shows and movies. As if raping men on top of their prison sentence is somehow "justice" that they deserve. It's horrific.
A few years ago, I spent a night in in Fulton County jail.
The purpose, in my opinion, was fairly ridiculous. I'll tell a reasonably brief version of the story.
I moved to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech for my masters. One late night, I was driving and took a right on a red light that had a "no right on red sign" accidentally.
Don't forget to check for no right on red signs.
No traffic was around and luckily no one was endangered, but I did receive a ticket (clearly the Atl police had set up a trap of sorts). Should have paid attention, but no big deal.
So the court date is approaching, and so is my first day of classes. In the rush of getting ready for the start of the semester, I forgot my court date.
Don't forget your court date.
The next day, in a panic, I call the courthouse to pay my ticket and any applicable late fees. I assumed that a late fee would cover the infraction and we'd all be on our way.
I paid the ticket. I paid the late fee. I forgot about the incident altogether.
Fast forward a few months, I was driving on campus on my way to class, early enough to get a coffee (yes!). I get pulled over for not having my seatbelt on.
Don't forget your seatbelt.
The officer took a few minutes and came back to ask me if I had anyone who could pick up my car. Of course I'm thinking, "Do I have a flat tire or something?", and he lets me know he's going to have to arrest me and take me to jail.
So I was put in handcuffs, on campus, and taken to Fulton County Jail, where I was fully booked into a holding cell. I could not call anyone to come post bail, because your "one call" was only allowed to be a local call, and you had to know the number by heart. I couldn't post the bail myself via card, of course. So, I spent 36 hours there. My parents even paid my bail, but somehow the bail didn't take effect (even though others arrested after me got out on bail).
Strangest 36 hours of my life, by far.
All of my clothes and belongings were taken, as is protocol. Not a single guard seemed to have any sense of regard for me (or any other person being held), uniformly ignoring simple requests like "can I have some water?" and "what time is it?". I was in a common holding room with about 10 others for most of the first day, until they did our physicals and booked us all into overnight cells. I was woken up to a yelling guard at 3AM to eat "breakfast." Everyone who had been arrested the day before was chained together (as in, chains around my waist) and taken to a prison court to see a judge via a camera mounted on a TV. The judge essentially looked at my case and released me, and a few hours later I was finally let out.
Turns out, when you forget a court date, your license gets suspended. For me, that meant I had to have someone take me to Alabama to have it unsuspended.
tl;dr; The crazy part of the justice system is, once the ball gets rolling and protocol is instantiated, your lost time is chalked up to collateral damage and "due process." Your sense of safety, clarity, and rights are removed, even in minuscule clerical cases like mine. I can't even begin to imagine the ridiculous feeling of being in jail and sexually assaulted for months, much less years, over something slightly more egregious than a suspended license.
P.S. My arrest was completely expunged from my record, but you can still find my mugshot online. My dad laughs at it every time he sees it.
And people still seriously think that taking anonymity away from the internet is a good thing.
I don't know what sickens me more, the american legal system or modern internet filled with people that have absolutely no understand of privacy because of their sheltered lives.
I Think it is frightening how illogical and incompetent USA work for justice, instead they ruin lives of innocent people, even robbing them of the freedom to speak. They just turned down their own culture once again, like all the censure they apparently love.
is there any evidence in this case which should be admissable in a court of law? i might eb exaggerating - i mean i think they got the right guy, but i see nothing here which is a good enough quality of 'evidence' for legal purposes, and i am not even a lawyer...
day to day knowledge of law suffices to throw this out. :/
The law has to be applied uniformly. If we prosecute one individual for a particular act, we have to prosecute all individuals who perform such acts. We clearly have, as a society, the means to make this happen, so then, why don't we? It seems that we are abandoning the principles that guide the rule of law here.
Don't make threats if you don't intend to follow up on them.
Also, from his lawyer: "They didn't find pentagrams and candles. He wasn't listening to Judas Priest."
WTF does that have to do with anything? Do only Judas Priest fans shoot up kindergartens? Is there something wrong with liking pentagrams and candles? I think that lawyer is the real creep here, and that kind of defense deserves to be ineffective.
In any case, if you threaten to shoot up a kindergarten, of course the police is going to look into you. Imagine the outrage if they got a tip like that, ignored it, and then the guy shot up a kindergarten? They have no option but to detain him, and the lack of candles in his home is utterly irrelevant to that.
And of course they then need to gather complete evidence, which includes the facebook conversation, details of his past, his mental health, etc. And maybe they messed up there. They clearly messed up some other stuff, in particular the jail where someone can get sexually molested, and the fact that they conned him out of a lawyer. The article does list a number of worrying aspects of US law enforcement injustice that seems way too common lately. But that doesn't change the fact that if you make a death threat, you should expect to get arrested.
> Don't make threats if you don't intend to follow up on them.
Hello, Thought Police.
It wasn't a threat. It was a series of tasteless jokes.
The consequences aren't even remotely proportional. You know what would be proportional? Someone calling him out for being tasteless, or perhaps even unfriend him, or report the abuse to Facebook so he had to tone it down.
It's scary that people think this kind of "justice" is remotely ok. It's not. This is on par of a witch burning for someone not adapting to social norms.
> It wasn't a threat. It was a series of tasteless jokes.
It's a joke that looks a lot like a threat. And threats aren't funny.
The arrest was not disproportional. The corruption that happened after the arrest was of course totally crazy and wrong, but the police investigating threats is not wrong. The problem here is that they didn't really investigate it; they just tried to get him convicted by any means possible. But when someone says he's going to shoot up a kindergarten, the police absolutely should investigate.
By your logic, all of the following statements should lead to an arrest:
I'm gonna have to kill someone if I don't get to sleep soon.
You make me so mad I want to kill you!
If these kids don't calm down you'll have to restrain me so I don't kill one.
A: If they don't budge on this soon we'll have to consider some other options. B: What about kidnapping?
Plus a bunch of comedian, talk-show hosts and other free-spoken people. A joke is a joke; it's not an action and it's not a plan to action. It's irrelevant whether you personally find it funny or not.
If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged. - Cardinal Richelieu
Please reconsider the consequences of what you are proposing.
The point is that this is a stupid moral panic, which is why he was referencing past stupid moral panics. He's not trying to imply that Judas Priest is staging a comeback.
But you should not expect to be put in jail, that's nonsense.
People say "I'm gonna kill you" every day to their friends as the way of saying "I don't like what you just did", does not mean they are violent in any way.
The society where it's OK to go to jail for saying something without being any real threat is not healthy at all. Stupid jokes are non-violent.
In my country there is a death threat law that says that person can be charged in court with a death threat if and only if there is a strong reason to believe that the threat was real. It's not enough to say "I will kill you", you must have had a real conflict or hold a knife to have legal consequences.
Serious threats and "joke" threats are not always easy to tell apart. And dismissing serious threats as "it's probably a joke" can be very dangerous. Of course you shouldn't be imprisoned for a stupid joke, but any threat that looks serious has to be investigated.
And people shouldn't assume they can do stupid things with impunity just because they _meant_ it as a joke. Some stupid jokes are far more stupid than people realize, and can really hurt people, directly or indirectly.
This wasn't a specifically targeted threat, but some "joke" threats are targeted, and the target can't always tell whether it's serious or a stupid joke. And assuming all threats are jokes means that the serious ones get ignored. And sometimes some real bastards hide behind "it's just a joke. Can't you take a joke?" while they're threatening and intimidating people.
And considering how easy it is to simply not make "joke" threats, I'd rather see threats taken too seriously than ignored.
Yes, the corruption and travesty of justice after the arrest is horrible, and (yet another) sign that something is really rotten in US law enforcement. But in principle, detaining someone who says he's going to shoot up a school is a sensible precaution. Don't want to be detained? Easy: don't say you're going to shoot people.
There are (supposedly) fairly well-defined use cases for probable cause and sufficient evidence to prosecute, and it seems these were all trampled over in this case.
In regards to the Judas Priest comments, I think that may have been some unintentional hyperbole/satire, pointing at the widely disproved profiling of school shooters. The Harris/Klebold case had a lot of cultural baggage of that type, most of which was fabricated by journalists. Citing them as fans of Marilyn Manson is one example; they possessed no Manson albums or memorabilia.
Oh, absolutely. The utter travesty and corruption after the arrest is atrocious. And that sort of stuff seems to happen way too often in the US. I'm not defending that at all.
The only thing I'm saying is that treating threats as a joke is stupid and dangerous, and the police should investigate threats, and not assume they're merely a joke without investigating.
Apparently that makes me a minority on HN, and most people here seem to think joke threats are okay. I don't.
Then there's the fact that the context of the offensive speech was excluded from evidence.
Disgusting!