## Facts

- After a nationally publicized Tulsa police shooting of Terence Crutcher, Jeffrey A. Stevens (in Connecticut) submitted ten anonymous messages over three days through the Tulsa Police Department’s online “Citizen Complaint” form.
- The messages accused Tulsa police officers of corruption and misconduct and repeatedly described future unlawful violence against specific officers or officers generally.
- The first message stated the officer involved in the shooting would be “executed” and that officers who “murder unarmed civilians” were “going to be killed.”
- Several messages extended threatened violence to officers’ families and, at times, linked threatened harm to demands (e.g., firing or prosecuting officers).
- Recipients did not know Stevens’s location; the FBI traced the messages to Stevens’s residence, interviewed him, and he admitted sending them.
- A federal grand jury charged Stevens with ten counts of interstate communications containing threats, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 875(c).
- The district court denied Stevens’s motion to dismiss on First Amendment grounds; Stevens entered a conditional guilty plea to five counts and appealed the denial.

## Issues

1. Whether the charged online messages could be found by a reasonable jury to constitute “true threats” unprotected by the First Amendment, allowing prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c).
2. Whether the messages’ political subject matter prevented them from being treated as true threats.
3. Whether Stevens’s asserted lack of intent or ability to carry out the threatened violence required dismissal of the indictment.

## Decision

- The Tenth Circuit affirmed the denial of the motion to dismiss and affirmed the convictions entered on Stevens’s conditional guilty plea.
- The court held a reasonable jury could interpret the messages, in context, as serious expressions of intent to commit unlawful violence against Tulsa police officers and their families.
- The court rejected the argument that political context removed the communications from the true-threat category.
- The court rejected the argument that lack of intent or ability to execute the threatened violence barred application of § 875(c) at the dismissal stage under the governing standard.

## Legal Principles

- “True threats” are categorically unprotected by the First Amendment, even if the communication includes political commentary.
- Under the objective standard applied by the court, the question is whether a reasonable person would foresee the recipient would interpret the statement, in context, as a serious expression of intent to harm a particular person or group.
- Context matters, including the language used, repetition, specificity, timing, and whether threats are directed to the targets (or their institutional counterparts) rather than broadcast generally.
- At the indictment-dismissal stage, if a reasonable jury could find the charged statements to be true threats, the case should proceed rather than be resolved as a matter of law.
- A threat may be punishable even if the speaker claims no plan or capacity to carry it out, so long as the communication can reasonably be understood as a serious expression of intent that unlawful violence will occur.

## Conclusion

The Tenth Circuit upheld prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) because repeated, explicit online threats sent directly to a police department, including threats against officers’ families, could reasonably be viewed as true threats unprotected by the First Amendment notwithstanding political motivation or claimed inability to act.


United States v. Stevens, 881 F.3d 1249 (10th Cir. 2018)