I was idly thinking about threats last night, and about the edges of what’s legal. Consider:
The conditional: “If you take the last doughnut from the break room, I swear I’m gonna burn your house down tonight.” There’s a specific, credible threat, but it’s predicated on someone doing something. If they don’t do it, there’s no threat.
The conditional criminal: “If you steal candy from my store, I swear I’m gonna burn your house down tonight.” Again, specific and credible, but this time, it’s predicated on someone doing something illegal. If they follow the law, there’s no threat.
The vengeful criminal: “Because you stole candy from my store, I swear I’m gonna burn your house down tonight.” This time, the object of the threat already committed a crime, and the threat is based on that criminal activity.
**The supernatural: “I hate you, so I’m casting the Curse of the Dreaming Flames on you. The next time you sleep in your house, you will dream of a fire, and the flames will escape from your dreams and burn your house down with you in it.” The threat is specific, but it’s based on supernatural abilities. If you don’t believe in those abilities, there is no threat.
I have some thoughts about which ones are legal and which ones aren’t, but they’re mostly based on my intuitions about what should be against the law, not based on actual knowledge. I also suspect that some of them are less legal in some jurisdictions than others, but again don’t know the specifics.
Question is, which of these statements could someone make without getting the fuzz involved?
All completely subjective, all examples could go either way.
Even threatening or announcing your intent to take legal action can be illegal.
It is often advised not to tell someone your going to file x action but to just file since depending on locale, even that could be a civil or criminal offense.
Based on a quick scan of that summary, number 3 is fairly clearly a criminal threat (and the stated reason for the threat is irrelevant except insofar as it adds to the reasonable credibility of the threat, yes?) and number 4 clearly is not.
Both 1) and 2) are conditional, and per the summary
The courts have held “conditional threats are true threats if their context reasonably conveys to the victim that they are intended”
So my layman’s read is that there would be a question for the trier of fact to see if the particular fact pattern satisfies the “reasonably conveys”. Seems like that would be the key to any distinction between 1) and 2), not the legality of the behavior which is the predicate for the threatener’s conditional in the OP.
For example, for someone other than me to have sex with my husband, given his informed consent, is not illegal in California (although there are a couple of torts that might be implicated), but if I were to say
1a) “If you have sex with my husband I swear I’m gonna burn your house down tonight”
that is probably a more reasonably credible threat (assuming the target of the threat does not know me well enough to know that I am in no way that sort of person)
than
2b) “If you abuse that animal [e.g. in specific way X that is a crime in CA, but low on the hierarchy: presumably a wobbler] I swear I’m gonna burn your house down tonight” (assume for hypo that the house burning will not affect the animal that I am trying to protect, and let’s say I do not have a history of animal rights activism).
The reason I’m confused about 2 is the criminal nature of the condition. Can I go to the cops and say, “Hey, I’m planning on committing a crime, but this bastard threatened me with a house-burning if I commit it, and that’s WAY OUT OF LINE!”?
I wondered if the same laws preventing cops from giving a shit if I complain about you stealing my weed would kick in here.
I’m basing this strictly on what I have learned from watching Cops, but people do complain about getting ripped off by their drug dealers on a regular basis, resulting in the complainer getting hauled off in cuffs.
I don’t know of any law that prevents a cop from arresting someone for stealing weed. Of course, they would probably also arrest the person who claims to own the weed.
This threat v. free speech line is one of the most confusing areas of criminal law, even for judges. First, you have the “true threat” line of cases. In your donut eating example, would a reasonable person really think that you would burn their house down for eating the last donut? This comes into the “I’m gonna kill you” after you burn someone on a joke. It’s not against the law because it is not a true threat.
The basic law on conditional threats is that, if a true threat, the condition must be such that you are legally permitted to carry out the threat in order for the threat to be legal.
For example, I could legally say, “If you attempt to come to my house and harm my family, I will use deadly force against you.” A threat? Yes. A true threat? Yes. But the condition would give me legal justification to carry out the threat.
If I say, “If you try to have sex with my sister, I will kill you.” If that is a true threat, then I am guilty, because you having sex with my sister does not privilege me to use deadly force against you. Illegal.
Other than those general guidelines, throw a dart at a dartboard because courts are all over the place on this one.
Because one can objectively determine whether a reasonable person would be fearful ?
It’s based solely on individual judgements. That’s exactly how the law works.
Which is the typical standard, except now the SCOTUS has ruled that is not a sufficient standard. In favor of the claims that you must determine the intent to make a threat.
If there’s an objective way to measure either of those standards, let the world know please because as has been stated, actual court cases are all over the place.