Judge Refuses To Dismiss League of Legends Terrorist Threat Case

[Something Amyss]

And this is why you shouldn't be stupid.
Don't be stupid people.

Being stupid isn't a crime. If it was, we'd have to jail the lawmakers first.

On the one hand, being prosecuted for a comment made on an online game is ridiculous.

On Facebook.

Now, considering the stupid shit I see on Facebook, it seems a bit absurd still. But Facebook is a little more public. And this is sticking point with me, especially of late.

Damned if you do, damned it you don't.

And yes, they admittedly are screwed both ways. But that doesn't validate the overreaction. Yeah, they're screwed both ways, and then they cranked it up to 11.

Sure, when it's a Lite Brite ad, people are like "why did you waste our time?" and when someone slams planes into a building , it's "why didn't you do anything (despite the fact that you did, just prior, and you were mocked for wasting our time)?" But once you've established the guy isn't a threat, maybe dial it back a few.

Some of ya'll seem to forget he was getting harassed first.

Assuming the "your crazy" comment was in a vacuum and counts as harassment, at best you've established a "two wrongs" argument.

Not to mention, wasn't it a family member of the person who initially harassed him that kickstarted this legal issue?

That's news to me. One of the original outrages was that the person who complained didn't live in the area and didn't have any cause to get involved.

I

thought that's why we have that "freedom of speech" thing, so that our government can't police what we say. I guess the constitution doesn't mean much anymore.

Oh dear Lord.

Free speech doesn't have universal ramification. You cannot threaten, you cannot call for someone's death, you cannot shout "fire" in a crowded theater, and so on. And adding "lol jk" to it (and after the fact, I might add) doesn't mean that people aren't going to see it as a threat.

If you jokingly threaten to kill someone, the authorities aren't guaranteed to see it that way, and this neither violates freedom of speech nor is it something new.

f you're going to talk about free speech and the Constitution, know what it says and what it means. Arguments like these do more to devalue free speech than anyone involved in this case is likely to. Now, one could argue about other portions of the Constitution, since the bail was pretty unreasonable, the charges seem harsh, and there have been questions raised about due process, but that's another story (and not all of it confirmed).

Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences, nor does it mean freedom to threaten or harm others.

 

[Gunner 51]

Wow, this is what I call pants-on-head retarded.

OK, the kid in question is definately in no ways a terrorist. Terrorists may be murderous arseholes, but they are politically motivated. This kid was just being a mouthy douche. To my eternal shame, I have made similar statements when I was 14 and they were the product of immaturity more than anything else.

Just give the kid a month long ban from the internet and call it a day.

Here in Britain, the case would barely get a sarcastic roll of the eye from a disinterested desk sergeant never mind getting a full blown trial.

But all this hub-bub shows me is that this could very well end the notion of internet neutrality. (Sorry, I'll leave the post here and take my tinfoil hat off while I'm at it. )

 

[Hagi]

8 years in jail sounds about right.

For the people who put this guy in jail from March until July under circumstance so bad he had to be put in solitary confinement for his own protection and consequently under suicide watch after being assaulted several times by other inmates.

Seriously? A single freaking stupid comment on Facebook is enough to warrant several assaults, solitary confinement and overall conditions so bad the guy's seriously considering suicide? And you've got people here saying he deserves several years more of that?

This whole thing is altogether disgusting, this guy should not have been treated like this.

 

[Truman Soutar]

Granted it is a horrible, idiotic thing to say and is indicative of idiocy being "cool", but I was not aware that stupidity was a jail-able offence.

The first true crack in freedom of speech in 'Murica has arrived me thinks.

 

[tippy2k2]

Damned if you do, damned it you don't.

And yes, they admittedly are screwed both ways. But that doesn't validate the overreaction. Yeah, they're screwed both ways, and then they cranked it up to 11.

Sure, when it's a Lite Brite ad, people are like "why did you waste our time?" and when someone slams planes into a building , it's "why didn't you do anything (despite the fact that you did, just prior, and you were mocked for wasting our time)?" But once you've established the guy isn't a threat, maybe dial it back a few.

I 100% agree that once it's established that he isn't a threat, it should have been backed off at that point.

Now admittedly, I haven't closely followed this case. Maybe there's more behind it we don't know about (which is why they are continuing to pursue it) or maybe it's just a "setting an example" kind of thing. If there truly is nothing else to this beside what we see here, I agree that at this point, the issue should have been dropped (I suppose community service if you are feeling like SOMETHING has to be done but that should be the farthest it goes).

Also: I 110% agree with the mis-use of the term "freedom of speech". I swear no one seems to understand what it actually means...

 

[w00tage]

Good. Throw the little shit in prison. I mean, I'm all for freedom of speech and the GIFT, but still, saying shit like that deserves punishment. 8 years is a bit harsh, but maybe next time he won't try to seem edgy and cool.
As for the aforementioned "crossing the line twice" and "refuge in audacity" excuses, that works in fiction, and even then, only to a point. And this is the kind of crazy shit that actually happens.

Funny thing is, all these people crying about how he should be left alone would be doing the exact opposite, (I.E. "Why didn't they lock him up, he even said he was, who's stupid enough to ignore that on just a "jk, lol.") if he actually did go shoot up a school.

Wait.
Wait.
Wait.


Wait.
"Only works in fiction?"
Ok, so if I were to post here that "I plan to steal 3 semi trucks, load them with barrels of gasoline, and then duct tape them together so I can drive them all at once and ramp them off that dirt pile from the construction in front of the office so I can slam them into the third floor window and kill that douchebag Bob from accounting"

That would constitute a completely legitimate terroristic threat. Really? Really.

Also, wow! Surprise and alarm! If he did something horrible and illegal people would want him to be in JAIL. Good heavens. You should be in POLITICS.

I'll say if he didn't want any chance to be construed as being serious he should have taken the absurdity further, but that is very much a thing. And given that other than a bad attempt at a dark humor joke, he hasn't actually so far done anything illegal, then yes, people are fairly justified to point out that the threat of jail time for most of a decade is rather absurd.

f

Wait. Wait wait wait. You don't think what he said was ABSURD ENOUGH?

Seriously. He was being a sarcastic teenager and posted the conversation as an example of a laughable event on a website where he has every right to expect his comment to only be seen by his private circle. Facebook breaches expectations of privacy as a matter of course, because selling data on you is how they get paid. One has to exercise unreasonable care to find the settings to restrict the dissemination of your posts, and this has been an issue many times in Facebook's existence.

Seriously. This kid is being crucified as a scapegoat for the failure of our society to grow kids up in a way that doesn't make them shoot up schools.

 

[w00tage]

And this is why you shouldn't be stupid.
Don't be stupid people.

Being stupid isn't a crime. If it was, we'd have to jail the lawmakers first.

On the one hand, being prosecuted for a comment made on an online game is ridiculous.

On Facebook.

Now, considering the stupid shit I see on Facebook, it seems a bit absurd still. But Facebook is a little more public. And this is sticking point with me, especially of late.

Damned if you do, damned it you don't.

And yes, they admittedly are screwed both ways. But that doesn't validate the overreaction. Yeah, they're screwed both ways, and then they cranked it up to 11.

Sure, when it's a Lite Brite ad, people are like "why did you waste our time?" and when someone slams planes into a building , it's "why didn't you do anything (despite the fact that you did, just prior, and you were mocked for wasting our time)?" But once you've established the guy isn't a threat, maybe dial it back a few.

Some of ya'll seem to forget he was getting harassed first.

Assuming the "your crazy" comment was in a vacuum and counts as harassment, at best you've established a "two wrongs" argument.

Not to mention, wasn't it a family member of the person who initially harassed him that kickstarted this legal issue?

That's news to me. One of the original outrages was that the person who complained didn't live in the area and didn't have any cause to get involved.

I

thought that's why we have that "freedom of speech" thing, so that our government can't police what we say. I guess the constitution doesn't mean much anymore.

Oh dear Lord.

Free speech doesn't have universal ramification. You cannot threaten, you cannot call for someone's death, you cannot shout "fire" in a crowded theater, and so on. And adding "lol jk" to it (and after the fact, I might add) doesn't mean that people aren't going to see it as a threat.

If you jokingly threaten to kill someone, the authorities aren't guaranteed to see it that way, and this neither violates freedom of speech nor is it something new.

f you're going to talk about free speech and the Constitution, know what it says and what it means. Arguments like these do more to devalue free speech than anyone involved in this case is likely to. Now, one could argue about other portions of the Constitution, since the bail was pretty unreasonable, the charges seem harsh, and there have been questions raised about due process, but that's another story (and not all of it confirmed).

Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences, nor does it mean freedom to threaten or harm others.

Excuse me, but can you name the people he threatened? Because that's kind of necessary in order to establish intent to do harm. And re how people see it, we don't arrest people to be prosecuted before the court of public opinion.

 

[barbzilla]

This is bordering on thought crime, and the last I checked this isn't a police state (though it seems like it from time to time). The kid was obviously making a joke (a terribly tasteless one that he deserves to get his ass kicked for), and this is just an excuse to go after him. I don't know what their end goal is, but no DA in their right mind would prosecute that unless there is some evidence that he had intended to pull it off.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm sure at some point at least half of you have done or said something worse online.

I kind of doubt at least half of the people here posted something resembling a public threat on a venue like Facebook at some point.

Adding "lol" or "jk" after the fact doesn't help much.

"You can say whatever you want but If you do I'll throw you in jail" Is not freedom of speech...

Nor is it what happened here, so that's irrelevant. It looked like a threat and was treated as such. Since you don't have protection of free speech for threats, arguing how this harms free speech is kind of absurd.

It was well established fact for me for years now that many people don't actually believe in the freedom of speech. At least not in the way it was defined by the founders.

The founding fathers weren't as explicit on free speech as you seem to want to believe.

The way they defined it wasn't very thoroughly defined, and the definition you're using seems to fit in with decades upon decades of refinement.

I'm not sure why I should give a damn about what our founders intended. They intended women to not have the vote, blacks to be purchasable, half my ancestry to be the enemy, and all sorts of other shit. Do you really want to go back to the Founding Fathers' ideal nation?

"if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable."

Now just show me where the charges against him include "being offensive or disagreeable to the public" and you might have a case.

He clearly made a sarcastic hyperbolic response to that guy. For fuck's sake: his words were " "Shoot up a kindergarten watch the blood rain down and eat the beating heart out of one of them."

By that logic, the kids who shot up Columbine were also just kidding.

Except they actually did something. The difference between a joke and a terrorist isn't the absurdity of their claims. Klebold and Harris sounded more or less like some alternate version of Juggalos. And yet there's a pretty big distinction between Juggalos and Klebold and Harris.

Clearly, the distinction between someone saying something absurd "as a joke" and someone who's willing to follow through with it isn't quite as defined as you would have us believe. People keep saying it's clearly a joke. After the fact. Selectively.

As this is going on worse things are happening in America. If saying something stupid on the internet warranted this kind of consequence, 90% of people should be locked up.

Now, I admit I don't have 90% of the internet on my Facebook account, but really, I'd like to see some proof that so many others are making comments that could appear threatening.

So in the U.S. you can go to jail for making tasteless jokes?

It keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?

Time for "in Soviet America" jokes then?

Or will I get jailed for that?

Thankfully not, unless you say something like "in Soviet America, I'm going to shoot up a school."

Then you might.

There are people out there right now saying that US soldiers deserve to die because America supports homosexuality. There are people out there supporting America being attacked on 9-11. There are people out there making dead baby jokes and rape jokes.

Your free speech is not at issue, nor is your ability to make a joke.

That is the way it is in Canada anyway, and I would imagine it would be similar in the States, but I could be wrong.

Wouldn't the logical thing to do here be to research whether or not this was true, rather than operating from the assumption that it's the same and working backward?

This should be dismissed, freedom of speech allows us to say anything we want

Except it never has. Not in America, and I doubt you'd find any country where free speech is absolute speech.

I'll end it with this. I think the people arguing IT WAS A JOKE or FREE SPEECH!!!!!! are detracting from the actual problems happening right now: the fact that this kid was held with unreasonable bail (which barring an anonymous donation was out of his reach and therefore a guarantee of jail time until proceedings), and the harshness of the current situation.

 

[Something Amyss]

I 100% agree that once it's established that he isn't a threat, it should have been backed off at that point.

Now admittedly, I haven't closely followed this case. Maybe there's more behind it we don't know about (which is why they are continuing to pursue it) or maybe it's just a "setting an example" kind of thing. If there truly is nothing else to this beside what we see here, I agree that at this point, the issue should have been dropped (I suppose community service if you are feeling like SOMETHING has to be done but that should be the farthest it goes).

Also: I 110% agree with the mis-use of the term "freedom of speech". I swear no one seems to understand what it actually means...

In truth, it probably is trying to set an example. Even then, I think it's needlessly harsh and the guy who set bail at half a million for a kid with no outstanding threat needs to be out of a job. Hopefully, it's one of the jurisdictions where you vote on judges and the community decides this was batshit.

Excuse me, but can you name the people he threatened? Because that's kind of necessary in order to establish intent to do harm.

[citation needed]

Good to know, though: if you make threats to kill people, it doesn't matter unless you actually name them. In that case, why are you casting your net so narrowly? Are you only concerned in this case because it was a gamer?

If someone I know where to claim they were going to blow up a church, would you be their lawyer?

 

[Truman Soutar]

quote="valium" post="7.837635.20545134"]

The victim blaming is strong in this thread.
Fuck people.

The victim in this case being?

Seemingly, in this case, the victim is some theoretical school full of children, and no one seems to be blaming them at all.[/quote]

The only "victims" in this "case" are the all the paranoid people who, given their sudden awareness of gun violence in spite of years of (arguably continuing) ignorance, have been so whipped into a frenzy over their sudden awakening, that they need to find somebody, anybody to point at and say "if we just send people like him/her to jail we will all be safe again".

That feeling of fear you get in the your chest, that flushed feeling in your throat, whenever someone says or does something that doesn't immediately compute with you, won't go away no matter how many you prosecute for lesser and lesser "crimes".

"Just because something makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change." -Megyn Kelly

"Don't argue with idiots, they only bring you down to their level, where they beat you with experience."

 

[Mr_Spanky]

Looking through this thread it's becoming pretty obvious that freedom of speech is pretty much dead. I get it was a tasteless thing to say but to actually try and prosecute this guy on ANY level (least of all with potential incarceration at the end of it) is patently ridiculous.

And honestly I can't even be bothered to qualify that - as far as I'm concerned if you don't see how dumb (and frankly very dangerous as a precedent) this is you aren't worth the time to convince.

But seriously guys jailtime for that? If you think that's right you know precisely jack all about what justice is or how it's supposed to work.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

It looked like a threat and was treated as such.

It looked like a threat to someone who was either extremely naive or stupid.

Now I admit there are enough such people in the world to treat statements directed specifically at them a bit special, but to protect them against getting terrorised by non-direct statements which no one the least bit worldly could construe as a threat is beyond the pale.

The officer should just have told whoever reported him that they appreciated the report but that in their professional opinion it was clearly meant as morbid humour and required no more follow up. The DA should have told the police to get a grip much less nicely. The judge should have told the DA to get a grip much less nicely still.

The republican (wild guess) voters who put the Judge in office should tell their party to never put that moron up for election again.

 

[Nathan Rice]

And this is why you shouldn't be stupid.
Don't be stupid people.

Kind of difficult these days, due to a school system that's being undermined in favor of a private, for profit one. Not to mention reality TV, no solid parenting going on (or so it would seem, anyway), and the nearly non-existent mental health system we so dearly need. You know... basic, fundamental society stuff.

 

[Something Amyss]

It looked like a threat to someone who was either extremely naive or stupid.

And as much as you want to marginalise anyone who disagrees with you, I seriously doubt you could pick this out from a nutjob who followed through. And sadly, this isn't the first time I've made this point. But somehow, everyone who disagrees is either stupid or naive.

 

[Someone Depressing]

I can't stop laughing, I'm struggling to type this. Oh God..

But no. He shouldn't be convicted. He was an idiot for saying that. But still, being put in jail for making an ill-advised comment is kind of like putting Jimmy in the juvie because he isn't eating his greens.

I've also made a few comments like this in real life, although I had no idea what was wrong with them. Thankyou, schizotypal disorder, you're my only friend.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

I seriously doubt you could pick this out from a nutjob who followed through.

Maybe, can you provide me with a single example containing obvious hyperbole and calling it out as a joke specifically?

 

[SamTheNewb]

Says the person who doesn't read any further than directly under his nose. I think it's deserving of 3 months, tops.

I find the irony in your post upsetting. Since he has spent 4.5 months in custody already.

 

[Areloch]

Oh man, I was hoping I would get to play this game.

"in Soviet America, I'm going to shoot up a school."

Hang on guys, I think Zachary is going to shoot up a school somewhere. I need to call the cops.

See how easy that was?

Obviously, if someone did some research on you and your post, they'd conclude the "threat" was groundless. But that's part of the problem.
Did this get looked into before he got tossed in jail? Would you have been?

 

[marioandsonic]

Stupid and tasteless thing to say, but 8 years in prison for this would be even more stupid.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.