criminal-law freedom-of-speech tort assault harassment
What constitutes a threat
<p>Assuming no other details are hidden, and you only have the following facts, would it be enough to classify the case as a reasonable threat?</p>
<ul>
<li>Person A and B are roommates.</li>
<li>Person A is upset with Person B due to issue 1, and person A tells B to be careful next time or there will be &quot;serious problems&quot;</li>
<li>Issue 2 arises and Person A is upset with Person B. Person A tells B that &quot;This is 2 and you can guess what will happen with 3&quot; (Just meant there will be an argument) and &quot;You should be careful with me&quot;. Person B asks &quot;What will happen on 3?&quot;. Person A replies &quot;Nothing illegal. I'm a person of law&quot;</li>
<li>No other interaction happens, especially no face-to-face or voice interaction</li>
</ul>
<p>I know a threat is dependent on intention, but would there be any reason for police to interfere,  based on this exchange happening through text messages?</p>

<p>Start with the premise that Person A has so far engaged only in speech, which is presumptively protected by the First Amendment. So unless the speech is for some reason unprotected, the police should not involve themselves.</p>
<p>This of course begs the question of whether this speech is protected. The First Amendment does not protect &quot;true threats,&quot; which includes &quot;those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.&quot; <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/01-1107.ZO.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Virginia v. Black</em>, 538 U.S. 343 (2003)</a>.</p>
<p>So the question for the police is whether Person A's texts were meant to communicate a serious intent to commit an act of unlawful violence. Removing First Amendment protection won't be as simple as letting B testify that he truly felt threatened, as the question is whether A meant to communicate a threat. But that also means that for A, it won't be enough to simply deny any violent intent, so the &quot;nothing illegal&quot; disclaimer won't be enough.</p>
<p>In the end, this is a question for a jury to decide, should the case ever reach that far. The jury would essentially be asked to engage in mind-reading, determining what A was thinking when he sent those texts. The jury should be instructed to take several factors into consideration when it makes that decision, including the &quot;context&quot; of the remarks (the explicit disclaimer of violence helps A), the &quot;conditional nature&quot; of the threat (the three-strikes langauge helps A), and the &quot;reaction of the listener&quot; (calling the police hurts A). <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/705/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Watts v. United States</em>, 394 U.S. 705, 708 (1969)</a>.</p>
<p>Practically speaking, if B were to call the police, I'd expect them not to investigate, unless they were awfully bored. If they decided to, I don't think there would be any actionable violation of A's rights, given their obvious inability to divine A's intent based solely on B's account. A court would likely allow them to investigate, but I doubt a prosecutor would allow them to bring charges based on the facts you've described.</p>

<p>I would guess that there is no threat. A test that is often used is &quot;clear and present danger.&quot;</p>
<p>There appears to be the possibility of trouble &quot;down the line,&quot; but is no &quot;clear and present danger&quot; here.</p>
<p>A mere &quot;possibility&quot; of a future offense is probably not an offense in and of itself (anyone can get hit by a car crossing the street), but if it rises to the level that a reasonable person would consider it a &quot;probability,&quot; then the threat might be an offense. (In the car example, if a car was running a red light at high speed, a reasonable person would judge that there is a real threat of it hitting somebody.)</p>
