The case of Washington v. Tracey Johnston revolves around the subject of spoken threats, and whether the threat is "real" or not.
This may sound either esoteric or like the trickery of a clever defense lawyer. It's not. How many times have you muttered a desire to wreack bodily harm on someone - maybe, for example, a driver on the highway - with no practical intention to follow through? (When I was in college, the phrase "he ought to be taken out and shot" popped up from time to time, usually for minor offenses.) Death and injury feature regularly in metaphor. Should all that be actionable as a felony offense?
On its face, Washington law (RCW 9.61.160(1)) seems to contemplate something like that. It says, "It shall be unlawful for any person to threaten to bomb or otherwise injure any public or private school building, any place of worship or public assembly, any governmental property, or any other building, common carrier, or structure, or any place used for human occupancy . . ."
The first amendment does come into play here, because courts have ruled that speech can be circumscribed only under extreme circumstances. The legal principle is that while most speech is "protected," one of the categories of unprotected speech is that of a "true threat" - a threat issued with apparent connection to actual or intended behavoir. The Washington Supreme Court has defined it, "in a context or under such circumstances wherein a reasonable person would foresee that the statement would be interpreted . . . as a serious expression of an intention to inflict bodily harm upon or to take the life of {another individual}."
So what to do about Travey Johnston, who blurs the lines just a tad? (more…)
Some of the reasons why may have emerged in a discussion involving University of Idaho President Timothy White, who was speaking to the legislature's budget-writing committee (the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee), and St. Maries Republican Representative Dick Harwood, who is one of that committee's 20 members. As Spokane Spokesman-Review reporter Betsy Russell