Supreme Court sets legal standards for online rants

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week upset many people who thought the court rewarded a man who frightened his ex-wife with his social media postings.

Anthony Elonis is a Pennsylvania man who posted grotesque messages on Facebook that he claimed were therapeutic rants in the style of rap music. He posted disclaimers on the site, saying his words “were for entertainment purposes only.” But he was eventually convicted under a federal law that forbids transmitting across state lines any threat to injure someone. The Supreme Court threw out that conviction.

“It was not a surprise decision because it fits in a rich tradition of criminal law cases by the Supreme Court holding that there must be a blameworthy mental state in order for the defendant to be found guilty,” said Daniel Medwed, who teaches criminal law at Northeastern University.

In the brave new online world, according to the Supreme Court, a post cannot be considered a criminal threat unless the writer meant for it to be taken that way. By an 8-1 majority, the justices said the standard isn’t whether a “reasonable person” would consider those messages as threatening, but rather the defendant’s state of mind.

“It will make it more difficult for federal prosecutors to pursue charges under this statute, but not unreasonably so,” Medwed said. “They just have to find evidence indicating, essentially, that the defendant was blameworthy and intended to threaten the victim on some level.”

This case returns to the lower court for further consideration using this new guideline. The lone dissenter in the case, Justice Clarence Thomas, said the ruling throws everyone into a state of uncertainty as to the exact standard under which someone can be convicted. The majority decided the case on an analysis of the criminal statute only—not on the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. And lower courts are divided on that issue.

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The case of the drug-filled sock

In 2010, police in Kansas stopped Moones Mellouli and discovered four pills in one of his socks. Those pills were a controlled substance, so Mellouli pled guilty to a lesser offense of “possession of paraphernalia”—his sock. Although the indictment did not specify what drug he carried, the government deported him.

The Supreme Court said that went too far. His conviction was for something that did not carry deportation as a penalty.

The deportation of Mellouli on minor drug charges is the fourth such case in 10 years the Supreme Court has overruled, said Susan Cohen, an immigration attorney who practices in Boston. A valid deportation for drugs has to include a conviction with a direct link to a drug specified in federal drug laws, and no such connection was made here.