Do Online Death Threats Count as Free Speech?
I would say not, but some would argue.
Exhibit 12 in the government’s case against Anthony Elonis is a screenshot of a Facebook post he wrote in October 2010, five months after his wife, Tara, left him. His name appears in the site’s familiar blue, followed by words that made Tara fear for her life: ”If I only knew then what I know now … I would have smothered your ass with a pillow. Dumped your body in the back seat. Dropped you off in Toad Creek and made it look like a rape and murder.”
Exhibit 13, also pulled from Facebook, is a thread that started when Tara’s sister mentioned her plans to take her niece and nephew — Elonis’s children — shopping for Halloween costumes. Tara responded and then Elonis did, too, saying their 8-year-old son ”should dress up as a Matricide.” He continued: ”I don’t know what his costume would entail though. Maybe your head on a stick?” This time, Elonis included a photo of himself, holding a cigarette to his lips.
After Tara saw these posts — and another one, from the same time, which begins: ”There’s one way to love ya but a thousand ways to kill ya. I’m not gonna rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts” — she went to court in Reading, Pa., and got a protection-from-abuse order against her husband.