I saw this news story on Fark. The gist is a kid is going to jail for putting out a CD with songs about school shootings.
Why is this valid considering the first amendment? I don’t know jack about the whole topic really. I’m guessing there’s more to the story (isn’t there always?) and that he was found to have actually effected some form of threat. On the surface though, it seems anomalous that in the US with your strong freedom of speech law he can be going to jail for singing a song.
Free speech does not protect making terroristic threats. There’s a line between singing “I’m gonna go kill people because I am so macho and I’m from the hood” and singing “I am going to kill the Vice Principal of Podunk Junior High, Mr. Nerdlinger.”
The details in the article are scarce, but it does say
I’m curious if the lyrics mentioned the people by name or just by title.
I suppose they saw it the same as yelling FIRE! in a crowded theatre, it could cause a panic and therefore danger. But the thing that gets me is he didn’t (seem to) sing it at school or anything, he simply made a prive CD for him and his friends. I suppose they could’ve seen it as a “threat” but hell, if that’s a threat then Grand Theft Auto would’ve been banned by now and all of Rockstar serving hard time.
Edit:
Good point, but the lyrics are what’s important. He mentions his school by name but is he outlining a hypothetic scenario “a man comes in” or is he saying “I’ma kill you all!” I’m guessing the implication was he was makinga threat but it’s hard to tellf romt eh article.
You don’t have a First Amendment right to threaten people with violence. Whether that’s what he did is a different question that isn’t well answered by the news story.
In general, there are many exceptions to the First Amendment. It is by no means an absolute.
In the US, public schools and schoolchildren have been held to have limited First Amendment rights.
See Hazelwood.
OTOH, sometimes authorities have a knee-jerk reaction and an itchy trigger finger due to violent incidents, and stuff like this gets overturned when the furor dies down.
So in short the assumption is that my guess is right?
required link:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1243698358/bclid1329243264/bctid1305005116
And Musicat, from my reading Hazelwood could only be applied if he were actively distributing the CDs around school to various people (like the school paper is). But the article is so vague it’s hard to tell what the hell was going on anyway, if I had to assume he was threatening the school.
Princhester I’d assume, from the limited information given, you guess is correct. He was threatening the school, or the kid has a history that gives a reasonable basis that it COULD have been serious.
Wow, who knew I could’ve gone to jail for singing that Christmas parody about burning down the school and the teachers all dying horrible deaths?
The key word here is parody, if it’s oviously in jest they don’t have much to go against you on, if there’s a reasonable chance it’s serious you could be in trouble.
Limited, yes, but only within the scope of the school’s authority. The school could restrict a student’s right to sing a song in school or distribute the lyrics or bring a copy of the CD on to school grounds. But in this case we’re talking about a student who was arrested and detained by the state of Maine not by the school.
Jragon, I only invoked the Hazelwood case as an illustration of how First Amendment rights are not held to be absolute for schools. Something legal for adults in an adult environment cannot be assumed to be permissible at schools. Details in this case are too sketchy and unreliable to be sure this is a valid analogy.
Ah, I see.
Anyway I reread the article and this caught my eye:
Two kids were involved yet only Hayes gets in trouble, or at least time/expelling. Methinks there’s definately more to this. He was already serving time for a robbery as per the article, it can’t JUST be the song that spawned this.
http://bangornews.com/news/t/hancock.aspx?articleid=161474&zoneid=178
Read all about it in more detail in Bangor, ME, where it happened.
No, the gist is that he is already in jail for robbery. Putting out the CD has brought an additional charge of “terrorizing”, but it doesn’t say what the result of that would be. I see nothing to suggest that it has given him additional jail time, beyond his sentence for robbery.
Well, the gist of the story is that he was charged with and found guilty of a criminal offence as a consequence of putting out a CD with songs about school shootings. The earlier robbery is background. From **samclem’s **more detailed link it seems (per second para) his sentence as a consequence of the CD was to be incarcerated till age 20. It seems (from the last para) that he had already been sentenced to be incarcerated till age 20 on another offence. So I guess you’re right that he wasn’t being sent to jail for the later offence since he was already there. But it seems pretty nitpicky to draw the distinction, since it seems the later sentence would have sent him to jail if he hadn’t been there already.
I believe this is what he has been convicted of:
I guess the court decided that the CD constituted a threat against the school.