The US Supreme Court issued a ruling Monday, in an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling in a case colored in shades of grey involving Free-Speech. The Case, Elonis VS. United States No. 13-983, and the high court's decision, narrows what can be considered a 'threat' on social media sites and the internet in general.
In this particular case, Mr. Elonis, who spent three and a half years in Federal Prison for threats made on Facebook involving his ex-wife who had recently left him, taking with her their two children. Using a combination of song lyrics, and what he described as "therapeutic" venting, Mr. Elonis described graphic images on his account such has killing his wife by a "thousand little cuts" and described her "bleeding" out.
To most people this does in fact sound very disturbing and more than a little threatening, but does that make his posts actual threats? In a rare bipartisan decision, eight of the nine justices said no. They described the posts as enough to clear the hurdle for civil action but not enough to make it a criminal case. in the majority opinion, the eight judges agreed that intent should be considered in the loosely worded Federal Law criminalizing online threats. I couldn't agree more.
The fact is, this case makes for a clear example of the duality of the system faced by those with and those without the money to fight these cases. Roughly 15 years ago, the rapper Eminem, was protested against. Parents across the country wanted him arrested or censored for his lyrics. Because Eminem had hit it big, and worked for a major record label with lawyers on retainer, he was never charged with a crime. Though he did face countless lawsuits, Eminem never spent 3 1/2 years in prison for his words.
In one song, Eminem describes killing his wife in vivid detail. In another, he describes dumping his dead wife's body over a bridge with the help of his (at the time) two year-old daughter. No judge sent him to prison.
Now in Elonis vs. United States, Mr. Elonis essentially described the same thing as Eminem had just a decade earlier. But Mr. Elonis didn't have a team of lawyers and a record deal to defend him against criminal litigation. So he went to Prison, where he wasn't released until 2014. His case wasn't overturned until just yesterday. How can he possibly take back the three years of his life he lost? He can't.
The truth of the matter is and always has been, that a two-tiered criminal justice system leads to two wildly different results for the same actions, depending not on the severity of the crime, but instead the ability of the person in question's ability to pay. One system exists for the rich, another for the poor.
As Eminem pointed out in his lyrics as part of later albums, had he not reached the level of success he had, his words would have criminalized him. As for the intent behind the words, Mr. Elonis was never even allowed to mention his intent at his own trial! The Judge had forbid it.
I applaud the Justices for their pro-First Amendment rights stance, but it does little to help the vast majority of people arrested for thought crimes, speech crimes and other theoretical crimes never actually committed. Many of whom are convicted on vaguely worded laws anyway. Until we get our over-criminalized, money motivated Criminal Justice System under control, there will always be a two tiered system.