Be careful how you troll!

What is the difference between a threat and a joke, and how can you tell for sure?



Healthy law is based on assuming your own people to be friends before you consider them enemies. The subtle balance makes or breaks the legal system, that is why it is so important for judges to not involve their emotions, and it is indeed emotions that cause you to react harshly when you are talking about school shootings. It clouds your judgement.

The issue of defendant's intent in uttering particular words (e.g., whether an alleged threat was made seriously or merely in jest), is a question of fact to be determined by the jury upon consideration of the words themselves and the circumstances surrounding their use.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm01072.htm

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Moonlight33 wrote:

Oh, wait!------ Right, US jails are in private hands,right?! And government gave a garantee to the owners to keep their cells stuffed....

I didn't know that, but if it's actually true that US jails are in private hands, it changes a lot of things, we don't even have to discuss about those poor guys future, as you said, jails have to stay full, no matter what, so a stupid kid like that is perfect.

The scary things is that actually a lot of people support this.

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How, exactly, do you PROVE something was a joke?

WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO

How do you prove that it wasn't a joke when you have absolutely no evidence, except, yea the fact that he did a stupid comment on the net? As we say, it's better to have someone guilty free, than an innocent in jail. But then again, guilty of what? Making a menacing comment?!!

And about the "Rome...." is it related to the subject? He isn't a foreigner from what I know, so actually he is in .. Rome and he is a Roman... So
Or maybe you meant that he should do like all the others americans (sorry to generalize), go on saturday/sunday in the wood, and try his AK47 in the woods and then post a video on youtube, but never post a (very stupid) comment on his friends picture saying something he though could be funny because this is menacing?

Plus yea, the guy didn't break any law, or maybe there is a crazy american law or at least a jurisprudence about a teen saying stupid hypothetically dangerous stuff on the net that got sentenced to jail and Im not aware of? (of course Im not aware of everything, so let me know if it's actually the case, I wouldn't even be surprised, as it is the...USA)

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Putting jk lol after something genuinely awful, something truly reprehensible, should not be a get of gaol free card.

True, but there is something you forgot about the law, and which is I hope also the case in the US.

What the judge has to do, and do, accordingly to the law, is not judging the fact as they are out of their context, but judging the fact included in their context. For exemple, if you kill someone during a car accident, if you weren't on drugs, respected the speed limit.... All this kind of stuff, you won't go to jail, and this is exactly the same thing for this boy.

If we, (mostlikely you, because we couldn't do that in France) start judging without taking the context into consideration, we will end up having real murdurers in jail with an unclucky father of family who didn't do any mistake but still killed a crazy driver in a car accident he wasn't responsible for.

So the difference between a joke (beeing basically innocent) and a real threat (hypotheticaly guilty) is actually the context, the situation.

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Crackmonster wrote:

The issue of defendant's intent in uttering particular words (e.g., whether an alleged threat was made seriously or merely in jest), is a question of fact to be determined by the jury upon consideration of the words themselves and the circumstances surrounding their use.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm01072.htm

Thanks you.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

In order for a school shooting threat to be a joke in that light, not only would the person making the threat have to be joking, all the people at that school would have to know it too.

Otherwise it is a threat.

Even if you append it with 'I was only kidding!'...yeah, you can say that. Why should we believe you? You're not our friend, we're not 'in on the joke.'

This is also true, we are talking about serious stuff here (not about calling someone a dick) and the thing is that we cant start putting people in jail because someone else though that what the other guy was saying was a threat. We send people to jail, for what they have done, what they are going to do, not for what they could have done, because if not, all you americans could go to jail, because Im pretty sure a good proportion of you have guns, and you could do something.

If I follow your reasoning, you have guns, I find it threatening (which I really do) = you go to jail. Of course there is a legal autorisation for people to have guns, but what if I find it menacing? So this is where the intellect of the judge comes, to solve problems like this where, once again, the context is everything, and not because a law said so. (basically this is the difference between a jurisprudence and a law).

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Moonlight33 wrote:

Oh, wait!------ Right, US jails are in private hands,right?!

The US prison system is privatised, yes. The jails are state run, the difference being prisons are made to house criminals serving more than a year worth of time. But the evil is in both. State run jails receive funding based on the approximate cost to house each person they can hold. The jails then stuff their 2 person cells with 3-6 people each, and feed them at far below the approximate cost. Where does the difference go? Into the fucking pockets of the people running the jails. The local jail in my city makes around 10 million dollars profit each year abusing this system.

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Moonlight33 wrote:

So, which exact law did the boy break? Could you kindly point out the paragraph?

He was charged with making a terrorist threat. http://definitions.uslegal.com/t/terroristic-threat

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Putting jk lol after something genuinely awful, something truly reprehensible, should not be a get of gaol free card.

I fully agree with this, but people seem to be too focused on the "jk lol" part and not taking the full context into consideration. What he said was an overblown response to someone calling him crazy. I think it's sad that no one has mentioned that someone calling the guy crazy was a more serious troll than his response. I guess it's perfectly acceptable to attack someone's psyche, but the attacked person cannot respond with a satirical line about child murder.



Btw, there is no legitimate reason (in my eyes) to separate this type of humor from others. Either everything is okay to joke about, or nothing is that could possibly offend someone. In the spirit of free comedy, here's a dead baby joke.

MURICA fuck yeah!!!! FREEEEEEEEEEEEEDOMMMMMMM oh wait...

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TheKleen wrote:

Btw, there is no legitimate reason (in my eyes) to separate this type of humor from others. Either everything is okay to joke about, or nothing is that could possibly offend someone. In the spirit of free comedy, here's a dead baby joke.

Spoiler

What's the difference between a dead baby and an onion?
You won't cry chopping up a dead baby!

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TheKleen wrote:

He was charged with making a terrorist threat. http://definitions.uslegal.com/t/terroristic-threat

Thanks, Dear, thats what I expected from God´s own country. Next it will be terrorism if you complain about the quality of drinkingwater:

Video at the bottom of the site in english
http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2013/06/23/us-behoerde-beschwerde-ueber-wasser-qualitaet-kann-als-terrorismus-eingestuft-werden/

And I don´t think it will stop there. Well, this political system is called faschism and exported from USA as "Freedom and Democracy".....


@BerMalBerist: In wich country do you live? Can only imagine North Korea to have described laws (Beside USA of course)

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Heh, I've remained almost agonisingly unemotional the whole time. I write; empathy is what I do. I could see this from all possible angles, or any given one, and attach myself to that mindset. Everyone has a story and no one's is wrong.

To be quite honest this never really had to do with school shootings for me. These young men could have been imprisoned for just threatening to kill one person, or rape someone's mother, or any variant of the usual bullshit we see online every day. Like I said, I've come to the heart of the matter for me, and I'm content with that.

The difference between a joke and a threat in this context is that a joke is known as such by all involved parties. We had an incidence once on here where one player told another player in global chat something along the lines of 'suck my dick'. They were of course reported and there was immediate action, mutings and the like. I knew one of the players involved and was surprised, because their conduct was typically quite acceptable. Before long it came out that this was a joke, and the person who was told to suck a dick was far from offended.

In order for a school shooting threat to be a joke in that light, not only would the person making the threat have to be joking, all the people at that school would have to know it too.

Otherwise it is a threat.

I am very much like you in that i can adjust to any mindset, and follow both sides in any argument.

It does pose a problematic proposition though, if a joke is only a joke so long as all involved takes it that way, and i would dare claim it could not possibly be true. I haven't looked into legal precedence but i surely hope the law does not determine it to be that way. I also agree that a "jk" does not correct a real threat, but it is about whether it was a threat in the first place, and "just kidding" is often an injection used to bridge the gap when a joke is not understood.

Let's imagine there are two people, one is a normal person that grew up in a city in a social environment, the other is one that has grown up with very few people around him, far from any city where he has developed a social handicap due to lack of interaction.

These people then meet under some conflicting conditions, and the easygoing social person jokingly threat the other person. The other person is socially impaired and does not get it, he takes it personally. Now it is no longer a joke?

Surely, it is not perceived as a joke by the socially impaired person, but that does not change the nature of the original intention.

I think there is no answer to when a joke is a joke and when it is not, the only person that can know the truth is the one who spoke it. We always have to attempt to understand the situation and the person speaking in order to make a claim as to whether it was a joke or not, but in the end we cannot know it for certain unless we spoke it.

That's why i am concerned when i see kids being jailed for rather normal immature internet behavior. Yes he probably learned his lesson and will never use examples which provokes that powerful emotions in people again, but i think it is wrong for any justice system to make examples out of its citizens.

In general i agree, but you have a premise i cannot agree to. I am fairly certain they did not understand the impact of what they were saying. I do not think they had any idea what sort of emotions they were provoking, or that they even had to be aware for legal consequences when speaking about that topic in public.

Even if they were upset and as such wanted to exaggerate on how crazy they were (first guy jailed), then it shows only that he was exaggerating and not serious. It is the cold calculating people you have to watch out for, not those who bounce off something someone else say and attempt to come out on top when they are dissed. That is a child's game, rather normal behavior if you ask me. I have done something like that before when i didn't want someone messing with me, to get them to back off, although in his ignorance he chose an example he thought would show he was well crazy but it was such a powerful example that it scared people who were struct by paranoia.

That really is the essence of the matter for me, he did not know/expect it to be illegal to do such things and i am sure it is not. It only provokes powerful emotions that is it. To me he merely showed his immature ignorance and nothing more. I would think it was okay if the government did an extended check on his background/psychological background, but in the end they have no right to jail him for so long unless they found proof that it was more than jest.

It has no relevance to the original intention whether or not the other part understood them, it is simply not relevant to the original intention in any way. It is the role of the judge/jury to guess whether or not they meant it in the first place, based on background checks etc. You can only say that something is perceived as a threat to the one who does not understand it, it does not make it a threat in itself. Sure, there can be real consequences as that person might react to what he thought was serious, but that only makes it a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation of the original intent and nothing more.

It is the role of the judge/jury to figure out if it was a threat in the first place, people are notoriously ignorant in general as i am sure you know, and will misunderstand each other, but if we were allowed to get someone convicted simply by going to a judge everytime someone threatened us on the internet, with the simple claim that of course he was serious, then this world would soon collapse.

As soon as enough of these examples are found, and the right legal right fighters hear of them, these kids will walk because their behavior was immature and they did not understand the consequences.

Some good news:

http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/11/4515828/jailed-league-of-legends-terrorist-threat-player-released-on-bail

Bail was set at $500,000(!) but the family received an anonymous donation for that amount, and so he's out of jail, for now at least.

good stuff! :)

EDIT:

Not good stuff:

"

Carter was reported to a crime-line by a woman who saw the Facebook conversation, took a screenshot and passed it on. A judge set his bail at $500,000 awaiting a court appearance on July 16. Following a series of attacks from fellow inmates, Carter had been in solitary confinement and on suicide watch. The bail was posted earlier today.

This is exactly as i said they might screw his life with this overzealousness. Retards XL, nice respect for people that they "serve"

"

"Law enforcement in this case didn't use their discretion to notice, this isn't real, this isn't an actual threat," said Donald Flanary, a defense attorney representing Carter, in an interview with GameFront. "They're so petrified by the world we live in, post-Sandy Hook, post-9-11, they don't want to be the officer who has to say that something happened on their watch. And I don't blame them, obviously they don't want to have a school shooting in their backyard. I get that. The reality is that it's okay to investigate, it's not okay to continue to prosecute and arrest when it's clear that it's sarcasm.

"He was not talking in public, he was not talking to [the woman who reported the comment]. He wasn't trying to make anyone afraid, he was intending to be sarcastic and say something distasteful and offensive. His speech is fundamentally protected by the First Amendment."

And yup, fucking retards.

At least some people who fight for the good in the world did hear of it!