I was in an online game chat room earlier today, and there was a very heated political debate going on. One of the subjects discussed was the shooting of Jose Guerena by the Pima Co. SWAT team (Jose Guerena shooting - Wikipedia).
TL;DR version: SWAT team breaks into wrong house, kill unsuspecting Marine and get away with murder. Some were criticizing the police and the so-called War on Drugs, and one particular comment was along the lines of, “It would be nice if Sheriff Dupnik [the guy overseeing the Pima Co. Swat team] met his end by the means of a vigilante’s bullet.”
I told the guy that - while we all wish for poluce brutality to be punished - it was not a good idea to say such things on the Internet, which is a public place. However, he told me that he wasn’t breaking the law because he wasn’t making terroristic threats - he was merely wishing that something would happen. He does have a point - he was not threatening anyone, nor was he trying to encourage anyone to conduct vigilante justice.
So my question is, is it illegal to merely wish ill against someone, as opposed to threatening them? There’s a difference between “I’m going to kill you” and “I hope you die.” What the person said in the chat room may have been in poor taste, but I’m not sure if it was illegal as I had thought.
IANAL but I would think that as long as you aren’t threatening someone, it would fall under free speech. Hoping someone dies is a far cry from threatening them.
As is always the case with legal questions, the answer will depend on the jurisdiction and on the specifics of the incident. Certainly in some jurisdictions lese majeste laws may make it illegal to merely wish ill against certain people. But for someone in America to wish ill against a particular law enforcement officer, I’m pretty sure obbn’s got it right.
In the US: There is a difference between wishing ill upon someone (which is presumably free speech) and making a threat. However, the difference may be a fine line. Certainly, a person who is continually wishing evil upon (say) the President will likely find him/herself the subject of federal investigation, if not actually being held in custody when the President is visiting the city.
Just a side note: on this Message Board, it is a rules violation to wish ill upon others. From the registration agreement:
Part of that fine line is if it can be construed that you are inciting others to perform the act. In the OP’s online chat room, there’s probably no expectation that one of the other participants will act on the statement, but in other circumstances, that might not be true.
Couple of points - neither of which exactly answer your question, but I feel they’re relevant enough to mention:
(both assuming that the dialogue you’ve related is only paraphrased to a mild extent)
Firstly, you said X wasn’t a good idea. Your friend argued that it wasn’t illegal, which is a nonsequitur.
Nextly, you were probably right that it isn’t a good idea. Illegal or no, if you wish specific harm on someone in some public forum, then that specific scenario comes true, you could end up under suspicion of having been responsible (obviously less likely the more distant the incident from you).
Hopefully justice would ultimately prevail, but along the way, you may suffer damage to your finances, your social standing, your personal relationships and your employment.
Hmmm…by that logic, Matthew Neu, Wiley Drake and others who have openly prayed for President Obama’s demise ought to be behind bars. Probably they would be if anyone thought their efforts actually had [ahem] a prayer of succeeding, but apparently God wasn’t listening.
And speaking of the efficacy of prayer…once in a fit of pique I lodged a most extreme imprecatory prayer against my ex-wife. Didn’t work. She’s still very much in the pink, and vile as ever. Maybe I should’ve tried sticking pins in a voodoo doll instead…
SS
Yeah, I was thinking about the same thing. I guess it also depends on who the target of the threat is.
For example, threatening Osama bin Laden (when he was alive) would have been just as illegal as threatening the POTUS. Of course, authorities tend to turn a blind eye when people say not-so-nice things about terrorists.
For the record, the guy in the chat room wasn’t a friend - it just someone I saw talking.
The example you give from the chat is not the example you use for the general case.
“I’m going to kill you” = direct threat, may be illegal depending on jurisdiction
“I hope you die painfully” = wish, usually not illegal
“I wish somebody will kill you” = can be incitment to murder, esp. if you are a prominent person with followers (a preacher or clansman) and phrase it more directly “Any patriotic American should kill X because X is a danger to this country” and one of the 100 people standing around listening takes this screech seriously enough to go out with his gun and shoot at X. In many jurisdiction, the speech-maker will be guilty of incitment, because without his speech, the follower would not have tried to kill X.
