The U.S. Supreme Court has ventured into the world of violent online speech. On June 1, in Elonis v. United States,1 the court overturned a defendant’s criminal conviction for communicating threats on Facebook. The court ruled that a mens rea standard of negligence was insufficient to allow the conviction to stand, but it did not explain what standard should be applied. Social media users—as well as prosecutors, defense lawyers, trial courts, and appellate judges—undoubtedly will be exploring this issue for quite some time to come.
Background
A Pennsylvania grand jury indicted Anthony Douglas Elonis, an active user of the social networking website Facebook, for posting threats on Facebook to injure his estranged wife, patrons and employees of the park where he worked, police officers, a kindergarten class, and an FBI agent, all in violation of 18 U.S.C. §875(c), which makes it a crime to transmit in interstate commerce “any communication containing any threat … to injure the person of another.”2
