The Michigan Supreme Court is taking up a challenge to a state law against making terrorist threats.
The case involves a Wayne County man who was charged after allegedly threatening violence at a school. He argues the law violates his free speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
That’s because it doesn’t specifically require someone to knowingly make a threat to be charged. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a guilty mindset is needed to limit someone’s freedom of speech.
In this case, the Michigan Court of Appeals summarized the U.S. Supreme Court’s position:
“In a true-threats case, a subjective mental state was constitutionally required in order to avoid chilling constitutionally protected speech,” the appellate court wrote.
The matter has gone before the Michigan court’s three-judge panel twice. The first time, it found the Michigan law against terrorist threats appeared to fall short of that test.
Michigan’s law says a person is guilty if that person threatens “to commit an act of terrorism and communicates the threat to any other person."
Despite the lack of an explicit mention, judges later found there was an implied consideration of a guilty mind in the law.
“The statute should be broadly interpreted to include a mens rea requirement even though the statute is otherwise silent,” the court wrote. “[T]he State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence. The State need not prove any more demanding form of subjective intent to threaten another.”
Now, the Michigan Supreme Court will decide if that was the right approach.
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