9th Circuit: Advocating Murder of Obama is OK

IRHari

IRHari

CAGiversary!
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http://volokh.com/2011/07/19/ninth-...dly-threatening-to-kill-then-candidate-obama/

The case is this morning’s United States v. Bagdasarian (decided by a 2-to-1 vote).
On October 22, 2008, when Barack Obama’s election was looking more and more likely, Bagdasarian, under the username “californiaradial,” joined a “Yahoo! Finance — American International Group” message board, on which members of the public posted messages concerning financial matters, AIG, and other topics. At 1:15 am on the day that he joined, Bagdasarian posted the following statement on the message board: “Re: Obama fk the $$$$ar, he will have a 50 cal in the head soon.” About twenty minutes later, he posted another statement on the same message board: “shoot the nig country fkd for another 4 years+, what nig has done ANYTHING right???? long term???? never in history, except sambos.” Bagdasarian also posted statements on the same message board that he had been extremely intoxicated at the time that he made the two earlier statements.
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Bagdasarian was convicted, but the panel majority reversed the conviction.
Click to expand...

Thoughts?
 
[quote name='docvinh']I thought it was illegal to threaten the life of the president.[/QUOTE]
The offender didn't explicitly say that he was going to take a shot at Obama, just that Obama needs to be shot with similar weapons that the offender owns. Big difference...for the lulz.

Anywho, if the offender demonstrated any actual actions that would be construed as carrying out that threatening action, then he could've been incarcerated for conspiracy to commit murder or something. By posting on a board, he's also not explicitly telling anyone to go kill Obama either, so he skates on the charges.

It IS free speech, but only because he didn't say he was going to do it himself or commision someone else to do it.

And yes, I read the ruling.:D
 
Not incitement, not a true threat, protected speech, appellant wins. As it should be, but there's definitely a fine line being navigated.
 
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