Anonymous Person Posts $500,000 Bond To Free Texas Teen
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He made a joke. An obvious joke, seemingly devoid of any real malice. The idea that he should invoke any punishment for this is insane. His speech is protected by the First Amendment, and morally he did absolutely nothing wrong.
Also: what's the point of bringing the NSA into this? Some Canadian lady saw his Facebook post and called the police.
Because its easy to draw a line between: 1. Some lady see's stupid thing you posted, you go to jail. 2. NSA Analyst finds some stupid thing you posted (at any point in the past?), you go to jail.
If not before that, then you're greatest generation, and you're obviously not Japanese because you would be singing a very different tune about American civil liberties and being charged for "crimes" had you lived through internment.
These examples go back as long as there is civilization...
I don't buy your "things used to be better" nostalgia. Everything looks better decades later, but it doesn't make it true...
Of course things were better. The "laws" under which this boy is being hounded did not exist. Plus many other similar new laws.
Widespread, blatant, unmonitored wiretapping has occurred in our history many times. Whether during the Cold War, or before, in the earlier days of telephony when checks and balances were quite literally impossible, the government has absolutely taken full advantage of the prevailing technology without respect to Constitutional rights.
You can argue that the technology makes the scale worse, but the same people are making the same decisions they always have.
Not that obvious. The only thing that makes it clear this was a joke was the addition of 'jk'. A lot of people won't know when that means and even though I know what it means I'd still be worried after reading the post and probably have it looked into. There are some things normal people don't even joke about - this is one of them.
Edit: I might be wrong on the last point. There will be some people who joke about these types of things. But his post wasn't funny. It was just a sick statement.
They also say "Shall my mom die if what I say is not true!" just to put emphasis, short version is "My mom die, I just found something interesting!" Weird? Everyone knows not to take that literally. A variant is "I should die, look here what I found!"
In the countryside there is a threat that sounds like "I'ma kill you and then do something else" (implying a beating) just as a funny way to scold a child.
Almost no usage of the word "kill" in conversation is literal. It's just a way to project aggression, get attention or just joke around.
So a Bulgarian invites Romanian relative to come visit for the killing (mostly brutal overeating on various pig parts with few gallons of wine for drink). Some cops intercept that and mount a full force investigation, wasting money and man hours, arrest the guys etc ... then release them of course, but this would have been avoided if just the cops has asked someone from that part of the country about the jargon used.
Kids even have a rhyme they sing while skipping down a sidewalk. The rules of the game are, you can't step on a crack between the stones. "Step on a crack and break your mother's back".
Is this how we should be judged by society, by what normal people joke about? Are you seriously holding that up as a point?
Yes, but in the opposite way: by what normal people are free to joke about.
(slightly off-topic: IMO the only way to really judge a society, is by the way it treats the very lowest/poorest/worst-off. everything comes after that. close your eyes to only a tiny fraction of the very long long tail of the very worst, and your perception gets very much skewed)
Edit: No reply link for me to respond the below comments so updating here.
Re: psychiatrist. >> "There's no suggestion that the comments were caused by mental illness"
If someone makes a statement like that and you decide it's a joke and not to punish them having a psychiatrist investigate seems sensible to me. You aren't punishing him so at least make sure he wasn't serious.
You can't be serious?
Edit: Based on the US freedom of speech I'm guessing written and oral threats to kill aren't an offence.
I believe that it is your viewpoint that any sports player or fan who says anything which can be construed as threatening to kill should be charged with a crime.
Here's a specific oral threat from Shannon Sharpe of the Broncos: "we are killing the Patriots". Of course, the larger context is: "Mr. President! Call in the National Guard! Send as many men as you can spare! Because we are killing the Patriots! They need emergency help!"
Should he be charged? If so, you have an extremely low threshold for free speech. If not, what makes this not a threat, while the teenager's statement is a threat?
If there's lack of motive, lack of planning, and lack of weapons, then is it a threat? Everything about this case says that there was no evidence that it was real, and that all exculpatory evidence (eg, the context this was smack talk, and the "j/k" and "lol" disclaimer) were removed from the evidence presented to the judge.
You say that unusual expressions are more deserving of investigation, and should have a lower threshold than 'normal' phrases like "I'm so angry with you that I could to kill you." However, in the context, the person accused had just been insulted by being called "crazy", and the response seems to have a riff on what "crazy" might really mean, quickly followed by the disclaimers.
Where is the actual threat? I don't see how this teenager is a real threat, just like you don't see how those other cases are real threats.
For that matter, and from what I understand, the person who reported the message is from Canada. Canada has a different cultural expectation of what free speech means than the US. If it takes a single report to make the sort of complaint about "unusual speech", do we need to accept anyone's standard threshold anywhere in the world?
If a DC police officer, who sometimes works as a motorcycle escort for the First Lady, can jokingly say that he want to kill her, and purportedly shows another officer a picture of the weapon he will use to do so, then surely that's a much more serious threat, with specific access and ability. Yet, that officer wasn't charged with a crime, nor sent to prison with a high bond. As I understand, he had desk duty while the investigation occurred.
Why is this case with the teenager so deserving of a disproportionately high bond, compared to other threats which are seemingly more credible?
Recently in Oklahoma, "A Norman man threatened via email to kill Gov. Mary Fallin's “child” and McClain County Sheriff Don Hewitt, apparently because he is upset about the death of his own child." "Helling, who told investigators he sent the emails from the Norman Public Library, was arrested June 7 on “unrelated warrants” and booked into the Cleveland County jail. His bail has been set at $20,000, records show."
Last year in Utah, "A Utah man who police say threatened to assassinate Gov. Gary Herbert is now facing multiple felony charges." "The 52-year-old Baker is being held in the Salt Lake County jail. Bail is set at $25,007."
So we have people who have specifically threatened to kill a governor (and in one case the governor's (grown) child), and had a bail of only $25,000 or so.
Why is this teenager's case so extreme so as to require a bail of $500,000?
I've searched, but couldn't find a similar case with a bail that was this high. The closest I found was from a few years ago: "A Philadelphia man was charged with telephoning death threats into 911 against Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly, authorities said Monday." "Fisher is being held on $100,000 bail after his arraignment Saturday in Manhattan Criminal Court on 10 counts of making a terroristic threat, authorities said."
I've instead found things like earlier this week, where "An Owatonna man faces felony charges after he allegedly threatened to kill a man while waving a baseball bat. Andrew John Kramer, 24, was charged with second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and making a terroristic threat in Steele County District Court on Monday morning. ... Because of his criminal history and the possible public safety risk, Judge Joseph Bueltel set Kramer’s outright bail at $30,000 and his conditional bail at $15,000."
Do you seriously believe that these cases of direct threats against specific people, including threatening to use a baseball bat, is less serious, and less deserving of high bail, than what the teenager did?
Why?
> D.C. Police Officer Christopher Picciano, "a 17-year veteran who was a member of the elite presidential motorcade detail," will be suspended without pay for a little over a month after joking about killing the first lady, threatening to go on a shooting spree, and calling Pres. Obama a communist.
> or some time with a psychiatrist.
Why? There's no suggestion that the comments were caused by mental illness, just by immaturity and disinhibited environment.
To my knowledge you have to be 21 to buy alcohol yourself in all 50 states though.
Even better solution is to just buy ultra pure for analysis ethanol from local chemistry store (or Merck), dilute with distilled water 3/2, add some drops (very little - a drop or two per liter) of glycerin to smooth the taste, some citric acid or lemon juice.
It is better than top shelf vodka.
Homebrewing beer legally is trivial though, and a fairly popular hobby. Homebrewing beer legally for personal use was trickier until 1979 iirc, so there isn't a long tradition of it yet, but it is becoming increasingly popular as time goes on.
However, unauthorized distillation in the US is considered a serious federal crime which is investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which tends to do everything with full force military raids that kill their targets and/or result in long prison terms.
A license to distill for fuel use only costs $3000 a year.
Home distillation is permitted in many countries. In the US it is unlikely as much of the country still believes that alcohol comes from the devil and anyone who drinks is not going to get to heaven. There are still dry counties in which sales of alcohol are not permitted at all, and there are still Sunday laws in place in many areas.
My point was that the state imposes restrictions on him because the state thinks he's not adult enough to handle the consequences. The state doesn't allow him to buy alcohol because the state thinks he's too immature to do so. Thus, it seems unfair for the state to suddenly claim that he's fully adult and fully capable of behaving like an adult and fully responsible for his actions.
So now he has to prove his own innocence as well? What fucking country is this? The prosecution has to prove guilt in America, not the defence innocence.
Perhaps if he had stated he was a unicorn from jupiter you would believe we should do a forced live autopsy on him to verify his extraordinary claims. The previous statement was a joke. The previous statement was not.
"Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still-beating hearts. Lol jk"
That's an obvious joke. The "lol jk" wasn't even necessary to flag it as such.
However, I am skeptical that there is anyone that actually took it seriously and didn't understand that this was a sarcastic comment. Those advocating this teen's continued imprisonment while making claims he is a potential mass murderer or terrorist are not sincere, they are interested in promoting the exercise of state power for its own sake.
Regardless of whether people know what he means, his intent is very clear. He shouldn't be punished because some people are too stupid to interpret what he's saying or deliberately misinterpret what he's saying to get him in to trouble.
Have you never been on the internet before?
It's more than just "some people" who joke about dark things. I would say most people make dark or sick jokes with their friends. It's normal behaviour. I find it hard to understand why you don't already know everything I'm saying. In fact it's slightly worrying that you have such a narrow (naive even) view on how "normal" people behave, and yet you feel qualified to have an opinion on the credibility of online threats.
Those aren't normal people. At least not "normal" in the sense that you shouldn't keep a very close eye on whether you should worry about what they will do one day.
I mean sure, not joking about something is everybody's choice free to make.
> It was just a sick statement.
It's the ones making baseless assumptions and judgements like this that I am most nervous about.
In the GP's plan that risk lies with the protestors themselves, in your plan it's the random xbox playing kids you are suggesting to report on. Making the problem worse before it gets better and possibly introducing a chilling effect causing the opposite of what you intend to accomplish.
http://ethicsalarms.com/2013/07/08/i-propose-a-quote-justin-...
Its an awful injustice and the guy posting the bond is a hero. But people have been prosecuted for stupid shit like this since time immemorial. Heck, at least the kid is white. It would make your skin crawl to read the kind of prosecutions small towns have engaged in against black people.
Yes, the point of the Bill of Rights is to protect against exactly this sort of thing, to prevent the government from shutting people up. That it has happened before, especially based on race, doesn't at all make it right, ethical, or legal. The whole point here is that freedom of speech isn't fought at Michelangelo's David, its fought at Larry Flynt's Hustler.
What's different now is that when the sheriff in some podunk town in Texas throws a mouthy kid into jail unjustly, the entire country hears about it on the Internet. That's a game-changer.
The police dispute whether the "jk lol" part happened. The only person who vouches for that is his father.
Is his initial threat credible? Perhaps not, but it absolutely does deserve a visit from police (many school shooters have made the same sort of at-the-time humorous comments beforehand), and I doubt many who claim otherwise would stick to their positions had he actually then moved to violence. What the police actually discovered we don't know, but apparently it was enough to make the police, the prosecutor, and a judge escalate the situation.
Whether he wrote a song, a poem, a joke, a virus infected his computer and posted it, a friend wrote it while he wasn't looking, a hacker got in and wrote it, or any one of a million ways it could have come into existence or be interpreted, the government does not have to right to suppress his speech, set excessive bail, and seize his person. That is why we have the 1st, 4th, and 8th amendments. If all speech was happy-go-lucky speech, it wouldn't need to be protected.
I would rather die in a terrorist attack, then live without liberty. Look up the number of deaths caused by smoking, cars, alcohol, and obesity and then compare them to the deaths from terrorist. Then explain to my why we can't risk having a kid express himself. When did we become the land of the oppressed and the home of those scared by words?
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Really think about that. Think about what it means, why it was said, what the logic is behind it, what the philosophy is behind it. Say it over and over to yourself. Say it to friends and family. Memorize it. Live by it. It is the quintessential wisdom for our time, and for all time.
We all need to live together, and rote recitations of absolute rights -- cast as if it's stark choices of blacks and whites -- doesn't match a reality that the world is a series of grays, and that your rights are perpetually in conflict with the rights of others (the rights of someone to make ill-conceived threats, versus the right to live peacefully and safely).
I also find it remarkable how many people cast this individual as a "kid". He is 19. At 19 many of us were living on our own, attending university, and there was no absurd notion that threats to schoolchildren would be treated as a joke, lol jk rofl.
Neither of us know why the police, judge and prosecutor decided to treat this so seriously, and it may absolutely be a gross overreach of the law, but at the same time the reflexively opposite reaction that holds his as an innocent joke of constitutional protected threats seem ill considered.
Whether or not the "LOL" "J/K" happened, the joke is obvious comedic hyperbole. I've had friends make really similar jokes. I'm sure you have too. My housemate shouts things like that over Skype while playing League of Legends. School shooters may write things like that, but so do plenty of perfectly well-adjusted teenagers.
I don't really have a problem with police making a visit, either. I don't think it's necessary, but if the police wanted to stop by and ask if everything's alright, no harm done. Still, there's a big jump from a police visit to searching his house and arresting him, and they seem to have done all three on the basis of a Facebook comment.
And if they found something really worrying, then they should be charging the kid with that. The fact that this is all they have implies that they haven't found that he's anything illegal. And if he hasn't, he obviously shouldn't be charged.
It's not how reality works.
Just write it like this:
P(shooter|makes-a-joke) = P(makes-a-joke|shooter) * P(shooter) / P(makes-a-joke).
And try to look at it, even qualitatively.
Even if every shooter was known to have made those kinds of jokes ( P(makes-a-joke|shooter) = 1 ), there are many, many more kids making those jokes who don't end up shooting anybody ( P(shooter)/P(makes-a-joke) ~ 0 because P(shooter) will be around 1/10^6 (several hundreds shootings so far over hundreds of millions of children being alive at those times) ).
Therefore a visit from police is absolutely undeserved because this test has mind-bogglingly huge potential for false positives. You'd probably had to interrogate thousands of kids per a school shooter to be found.
It's the same reason when you get "positive" on cancer test that has 99% chance of being right if you have cancer, that doesn't mean you have 99% chance of having cancer. It probably bumped up from 0.001% to 2% or something.
> and I doubt many who claim otherwise would stick to their positions had he actually then moved to violence.
Those who wouldn't shall be considered unwise and taught how the world works until they understand causality.
Of course, I'm not even mentioning the part about being thrown in jail for what is tantamount to thought crime. That's a whole 'nother issue.
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EDIT: I'm not sure why my comment has been downvoted? Incase you were confused, I was referring to this here:
"In April, a grand jury in Comal County, Texas, indicted Carter on a charge of making a terroristic threat, and a judge set bail at $500,000."
See, even though the Jury found him guilty, the Judge set the bail enormously high. This kid did NOTHING. He exercised his first ammendment rights, and got a 500k bail for it. The real problem here was the Judge, who gets to set the bail after the fact. I wonder what the jury would have concluded if they had been allowed to decide the bail?
The term "hefty fee" implies this is arbitrary or similar to a loan shark.
You may have just misspoke but to clarify grand juries do not determine guilt but are used to determine if charges can be brought in the first place.
That said, an independent judiciary is an important part of the separation of powers on which American government is based. While I personally find this entire thing reprehensible from soup to nuts, the judge's power to set arbitrary bail really is the way the system is supposed to work (the kid getting beat up in prison is not the way the system is supposed to work - except that plenty of Americans need a lot more civics education and actually do like to think of people getting raped in prison as extrajudiciary punishment for the suspicious).
Also, an indictment is not a ruling of guilt. A grand jury is convened to decide whether there's a case at all. I personally think this grand jury should have their citizenship revoked until they've passed a battery of examinations in what America stands for, but sadly, that's again not the way the system works.
I think we should have a refresher on what America does stand for, because I think it has changed quite fundamentally in the last <x> years, regardless of what your political angle is on the subject.
That is quite literally what America stands for, as stated in our own declaration, and in 1776 it was explosively innovative and inspired the entire world.
Unfortunately, we've forgotten that whole rights-belong-to-non-Americans thing, and that's a travesty. You can trace how it happened, and none of it is a happy story.
it's time to move past territorial / tribal groupings.
for extra brownie points we could start thinking in terms of the whole biosphere.
These things don't last long though.
A bigger problem: the state's attorneys and judges should know about the Bill of Rights, and they are the ones with the actual power here. With such a high bail it appears this particular judgeship was granted erroneously.
Isn't this a problem everywhere, though? Why do we only hear this issue WRT the U.S.? (I freely admit it could just be because I live in the states)
People in other countries get healthcare when they need it. They get assistance when they need it. Therefore, they have extra mental cycles to use to consider the reality of politics.
In the US, we make sure our poor people have to work two jobs so they can't stop to do a damn thing about how screwed they are by participating in our democracy.
The problem instead is that our "rights" are treated as privileges that can be revoked when the powers that be deem it convenient. Our rights should be rights regardless of our intelligence. Though perhaps the responsibility for securing those rights falls most heavily upon the cleverest among us..in which case the problem isn't that there are folks of below average intelligence, it's that those particularly blessed with keen minds aren't doing enough to defend the rights of us all.
Imagine an "education" scale of 1-20.
If you have 3 persons with 12 and one with 20, then the average is 14 -- and you have MORE than half of the people below average.
This particular judge, Jack Robison, was elected. Repeatedly.
He was also reprimanded by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct in 2009 after he ordered a man jailed for 30 days for calling him a fool (in a public restroom, not in court) — which is self-evidently true. http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/judge-reprimanded-f...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
(Excessive bail: Yep, founding fathers thought of that too.)
No, they stole the idea from British Law.
Because, we don't even have free speech guaranteed. Quite a few people are going to jail for their words. On top of that, we refuse entry to people and boot others out because of what they say. Merely their words and opinions.
See, now we have this scary notion of "hate speech". No one knows what it means, but people get arrested and charged, and end up in jail. Its on a whim. It's designed mission creep gone mad.
Any pretense of free speech in the UK is long gone.
Is there a country in the world that doesn't do this? If you're not a citizen of a country, you generally can be kicked out or denied entry for the smallest of reasons. Which is bad, but not unusual.
> No one knows what it means, but people get arrested and charged, and end up in jail. Its on a whim.
I'm not sure I completely agree with the hate speech laws of the UK, but there a lot of case law and precedent behind it, and it's not nearly as broad as you make it sound.
In general, hate speech laws target abusive speech intended to stir up racial hatred, and abusive speech intended to harass an individual. The laws also targets threatening speech against sexual orientation, or threatening speech intended to incite religion hatred. So it's okay to, for instance, ridicule or insult Islam or Christianity, but it's not okay to incite violence against Muslims or Christians.
The mainstream media basically left this kid to rot, save for a few blurbs on the 'fourth page' news. Had it not been for user-generated coverage on the net and the generous person who bailed him out, he would have probably rotted in jail for who knows how long. No, instead we're more interested in hearing about celebrity babies being born or some has-been mobster in his twilight years.
The system is broken - well, at least it's broken for anyone who respects human rights and civil liberties. To put my hand over my heart and pledge my loyalty to the 'land of the free, and the home of the brave'. What a joke! Thinking that we have any say in the supposed 'democratic process' is laughable. What does voting even do now other than make the slicksters in Washington play musical chairs? What is it going to take to actually create reform and install a government that cares about its people - a government that is the common people?
Apathy is imprisonment.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/teenager-arrested...
"[The Police] spoke to him, they fed him and someone was there making jokes with him. They just thought he needed a kick in the bum and that’s all he really needed,"
He's facing charges because the management of the venue wanted to place charges, but I expect he'll end up with something like community service and nothing that will ruin his future job prospects.
oh, now I'm sad...
FTFY. Americans believe his country= the world, not true.
Police abuse, federal spying and over abuse of the law system by the governments are, unfortunately, becoming a common point in many of the so called "democratic" countries.
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim,
I'll see you down in Arizona bay. Some say a comet
will fall from the sky. Followed by meteor showers
and tidal waves. Followed by faultlines that cannot
sit still. Followed by millions of dumbfounded
dipshits. Some say the end is near. Some say we'll
see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will cuz I
sure could use a vacation from this Silly shit,
stupid shit...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/03/198129...
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/solitary-confineme...
The fact that this kid's harmless comments have triggered a rabbit hole whereby he is on the receiving end of physical and psychological abuse while under the "care" of the state is disgusting and appalling.
I do imagine such concerns played into the donor's decision.
It's really baffling that this is actually happening and a real kid is having his life ruined over that.
How does the bail system fit to "Equal justice under law" ?
How a justice system can call itself just when rich get a clear advantage?
all of that is why this is so absurd. the bail is extraordinarily high for the "crime" and for the person's level of wealth.
It's still a nice gesture.
My guess is it was Johnny Depp.
It would be a big boost to the case, I imagine, if she comes forward and says "I never wanted this". And sticks up for the poor kid.
Whoever did this, heroes act in the shadows...