Elonis V Us
Elonis V Us
Anthony Elonis was convicted of transmitting threats over the social media website,
Facebook. The threats were made towards his coworkers, his wife, the police, and a FBI agent in
the form of rap lyrics. After Eloniss wife of seven years left him and took along their two
children, Elonis took to Facebook to post rap lyrics under the name Tone Dougie. These lyrics
contained threats to the aforementioned parties. Eloniss soon-to-be ex-wife was granted a
protective order from Elonis because she feared for her safety after seeing the Facebook posts. In
addition, Elonis was fired from his job after posting a threat to his coworker on the Tone
Dougie Facebook page. Eloniss former boss alerted the FBI and they subsequently began
monitoring Eloniss Facebook posts. Elonis was questioned by the FBI following a post in which
he threatened a kindergarten classroom. Following the visit, Elonis made a post threatening the
FBI agent with a bomb and was then arrested. Elonis was convicted on four of five counts of
transmitting threats.
Elonis contended that the jury should have been required to find that his posts were
intended to be threats. The court convicted Elonis on the basis that a statement is a true threat
wherein a reasonable person would interpret the statement as such. The federal statute does not
indicate that the statement needs to be made in the mental state in which the statement is
intended to be a threat.
The Supreme Court of the United States overturned the conviction. The belief of
SCOTUS is that, despite the statute not specifying that the statement needs to have been made in
the mental state in which the statement is meant to be a threat, does not mean that the omission
means it should not be taken into account. The opinion of the Supreme Court is that Elonis
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needed to have intended the posts to be a threat for Elonis to be guilty of communicating true
threats. As a result, Eloniss conviction should be overturned because it was made on the
premise that a reasonable person would understand Eloniss posts as threats. Eloniss negligence
in posting statements that would be regarded as threats is not enough to warrant criminal
Elonis v. U.S. can have a very significant impact on threatening speech on social media. I
side with the ruling of the Supreme Court as I believe that one must intend the statement to be a
threat in order for it to be true. However, this ruling can greatly protect threatening speech as
this case set a precedent for future cases. Future threatening speech on social media can be
defended by claiming no intent to threaten. This defense could lead to more threatening speech
on social media and leave people, such as Eloniss wife, to feel unsafe. This case further proves
that it is difficult to regulate speech on social media, which is how it should be because of first
amendment protection. Despite the consequences of this ruling, I believe it is the right decision
because it continues to assure free speech protection. As mentioned in class, unpopular speech
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