WV black lawmaker gets email with KKK graphic and anti-abortion message...also sues. Is this right?

[MrDibble]

@Max_S

It’s irrelevant whether the victim of an alleged threat is reasonable in feeling threatened.

No, it is relevant, because:

@Max_S

if Ms. Walker received an threat but didn’t feel scared by it (maybe she decides to mock it on social media), that shouldn’t stop the prosecutors from building a case.

What prosecutors? This is a civil case. It’s her attorneys bringing the case. If she didn’t feel threatened, presumably she would not have.

@Max_S

The important question is whether the sender is likely to have deliberately sent the email with the specific intent of threatening the recipient with violence.

The important question is whether merely “intimidating” a Black person with racist imagery can reasonably be considered a threat of violence by that Black person, given the history of racial violence in the US (the answer is “Yes”) Or, what puzzlegal said:

@puzzlegal

Then, um, do you believe that the person sending the image might have reasonably predicted it would feel threatening to her? And if so, how it that not an intentional threat.

There’s your mens rea. Not actual intention to commit violence, but actual intention to create the perception of such.