Below I have copied and pasted an article that [blew me away]!
Someone {ANYONE} please explain WHY DO murderers
WALK FREE in America YET this young man sits in jail for months WHILE
HIS [RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH] is continuing to be VIOLATED!!
OMG!
Have people gone 'mad'?? I freaking give up...Justin's [I have to be living in the Twilight Zone] momma
Ya'll be careful what ya'll say, or think, or
do...as predicted; BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU!!!!
The Christian Science
Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Did Justin Carter make a threat, or a sarcastic joke? That’s the question in the case of the New Braunfels,
Texas, teenager arrested for a comment posted on
Facebook that’s generating national attention.
Mr. Carter was arrested several months ago on a third-degree felony
charge of making a “terroristic threat.” According to court documents,
police allege that he posted, “I’m [expletive] in the head alright. I’ma
shoot up a kindergarten/ And watch the blood of the innocent rain down/
And eat the beating heart of one of them.”
According to Carter’s
family and lawyer, the comment was a sarcastic response to a comment by
another Facebook poster. He was 18 at the time, and “this was banter by
kids on the Internet…. He’s a gamer…. He never intended to threaten
anyone, he wasn’t serious,” says Donald Flanary, a defense attorney who
recently took up the case on a pro bono basis.
A
tip routed to a regional intelligence center led to Carter’s arrest,
Mr. Flanary says. “I can see how law enforcement can be sensitive to
those kinds of comments, and I’m glad that there’s a system to catch
it,” he adds. But for Carter to be jailed for months based on Facebook
comments taken out of context, with bail set at $500,000 – about five
times higher than many murder cases – is an injustice, he says.
This
isn’t the first time a teen Facebook post has led to charges of making
threats. In Massachusetts this spring, an 18-year-old was arrested for a
comment referring to bombing and murder, but a grand jury determined it
was in the context of rap lyrics he was writing rather than a genuine
threat.
There’s no widespread trend of such cases, “but even a
handful of cases where Americans lose their liberty for intemperate
postings should get our attention,” says
Ken Paulson, president of the
First Amendment Center
at the Newseum in Washington and dean of the College of Mass
Communication at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.
“There are safeguards that should lead to a critical analysis of
provocative speech,” he says.
In Carter’s case, Mr. Paulson says, it seems like “the entire [legal] system has overreacted to this post.”
It’s
also one example of the myriad ways people are stumbling into trouble
for behavior that has a wider audience on the Internet but would never
get people into trouble back in the day when trash-talking simply took
place in the living room as people played a violent video game, or when
drunkenness was witnessed only by a few friends at a party.
Societally,
people may want to steer fellow citizens away from using violent
imagery in their online comments, but when it comes to police
involvement, “it’s critical that we ensure their constitutional rights
are protected, and free speech is at the core of that,” Paulson says.
A hearing to reconsider Carter’s bail is set for July 16.
Carter’s father tells NPR that his son has been traumatized in jail –
seriously assaulted and put in solitary confinement because he’s been
depressed. Attorney Flanary says that Carter could eventually pursue a
federal civil rights lawsuit for being wrongfully arrested and detained.
The legal process has failed at several points along the way,
Flanary says. Carter was arrested before police confirmed that the
Facebook post genuinely came from his computer – a step that’s usually
routine before even suspected child pornographers are arrested, he says.
Police searched his house and found no guns or other threatening
material. And it appears that they didn’t look at the context of the
Facebook post before arresting him.
Flanary says that prosecutors
have since subpoenaed that information from Facebook but haven’t
produced anything along those lines yet.
Flanary also says the
small screenshot originally sent by the tipster includes a negative
comment against Carter, and that context was not included in the arrest
warrant and indictment materials.
Context is important because if
Carter’s post was provoked by another’s comment and was followed up by
an acronym such as JK – for “just kidding” – as his father has said in
an interview with
National Public Radio -- then on the face of it, it would clearly not be a threat, Paulson of the First Amendment Center says.
Flanary
speculates that one reason Carter has been jailed is that “no
individual agency wants to be the one that says, ‘It’s not a threat, let
it go,’ because then if something happens … they have to explain why
they didn’t do more.”
Comal County (Texas) District Attorney
Jennifer Tharp would not comment on the details of a pending case but
said in a press release that the charge carries a potential penalty of
two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. A defendant never
previously convicted of a felony may be eligible for “deferred
adjudication community supervision,” which, if served successfully,
would not result in a criminal record.
Ever since the mass
shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, many states have
bolstered laws to make it clear that threats against schools will be
taken seriously and prosecuted, says Ronald Stephens, executive director
of the National School Safety Center in
Westlake Village, Calif. Indeed, tips from students about suspicious statements by their peers have
prevented school attacks in recent years.
But
threat assessment teams that include educators, law enforcement, and
mental health experts should be in place to determine when someone’s
comments or actions constitute a real threat, Mr. Stephens says.
“We
rely on those enforcing the laws to use good, solid, fair, consistent
judgment, and that seems to be the question in this [Carter] case –
whether it’s been fair and reasonable,” Stephens says. If prosecutors
can’t at some point “produce their threat assessment process, they’ve
got a real problem,” he says.
