Skip to content
Business
Link copied to clipboard

Alleged Internet threats key in case before high court

As his marriage began to crumble in 2010, and his job at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Allentown hung in the balance, Anthony Elonis took to the Internet to vent his frustrations.

As his marriage began to crumble in 2010, and his job at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Allentown hung in the balance, Anthony Elonis took to the Internet to vent his frustrations.

He posted rap lyrics on Facebook in which he seemingly threatened to kill his wife, an FBI agent, and local police while also suggesting he might attack Dorney Park and even a local elementary school.

He was soon arrested, tried, and convicted of making threats over the Internet, and was sentenced to 44 months in prison.

Had the matter ended there, Elonis and his case likely would have faded into the background. But Elonis appealed, citing First Amendment protections for his Facebook posting.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Anthony D. Elonis vs. United States.

Because Elonis made the alleged threats on the Internet, and because prior Supreme Court cases have been unclear on how prosecutors, judges, and juries should evaluate seemingly threatening language, the case is shaping up as one of the most important to come before the Supreme Court in this term.

"It is one of the juicier cases," said professor Daniel Ortiz of the University of Virginia Law School. Ortiz and a small group of Virginia law students helped draft the petition that asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.

They have joined Elonis' Philadelphia lawyers, Ronald H. Levine and Abraham Rein, from the firm of Post & Schell P.C., who have led the appeal. Washington-based lawyer John P. Elwood is also playing a key role in the appeal.

What courts deem to be a "true threat" typically is not protected by the First Amendment. But different appeals courts have provided varying interpretations of when a person can be criminally charged. In upholding Elonis' conviction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia said a statement is a true threat if a reasonable person understands it that way.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled otherwise, finding that prosecutors must show that the person employing threatening language actually intended a threat, a tougher standard.

What makes the case unusual is that the threatening language was posted on the Internet. Experts on both sides of the case say that threats over the Internet are more difficult to distinguish from mere hyperbole because the sender and recipient are separated, and often don't even know one another.

Elonis contended at his October 2011 criminal trial that the rap lyrics he posted on Facebook were intended as a form of artistic expression and that he never meant to threaten anyone.

After he was fired from Dorney Park, Elonis posted this reference to the amusement park's forthcoming Halloween Haunt:

"Moles! Didn't I tell y'all I had several? Y'all sayin' I had access to keys for all the . . . gates. That I have sinister plans for all my friends and must have taken home a couple. Y'all think it is too dark and foggy to secure your facility from a man as mad as me? You see, even without a paycheck, I'm still the main attraction. Whoever thought the Halloween haunt could be so . . . scary?"

To that he added another post around the same time, directed at his then-estranged wife, Tara:

"There's one way to love ya, but a thousand ways to kill ya,

"And I am not going to rest until your body is a mess,

"Soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts."

After an FBI agent, who had been monitoring Elonis' Facebook page, visited his house and asked to speak with him, Elonis posted rap lyrics on his Facebook page suggesting that he had been contemplating slitting the agent's throat.

The judge in the criminal trial instructed the jury to find that Elonis had engaged in true threats if people reading the statements reasonably believed they had been threatened. Elonis' defense lawyer had asked the judge instead for an instruction that the jury had to find that Elonis actually intended the statements as threats, setting up the legal foundation for the appeal.