Stalking – What do you think?
Recently, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Billy Raymond Counterman, a man who was convicted in Colorado of stalking after sending repeated messages to female musician Coles Whalen that made her fear for her safety, including ones that suggested he knew her whereabouts and told her to “die” and “F–k off permanently.” She had cancelled concerts and feared for her life based on endless messages sent to her. It greatly affected her career. Counterman was convicted based on an objective test that considered whether a reasonable person would believe his comments constituted “true threats”—which, unlike most speech, aren’t protected by the First Amendment—but his attorney argued that the Supreme Court should instead impose a subjective test that takes the speaker’s intent into account, because Counterman didn’t intend to threaten Whalen.
The court ruled that for speech to be considered a “true threat,” there must be some demonstration that the speaker “had some subjective understanding of his statements’ threatening nature” and it must only be shown that the speaker was reckless with their comments, rather than actually intending them to be harmful. Since Counterman was not mentally well, this understanding was lacking. The case was sent back to the lower courts, where the conviction will be reexamined and may or may not hold under this standard.
Clearly, others involved with stalking or workplace harassment are alarmed at this decision since it provides wiggle room for harassers and social media is lax in dealing with these kinds of issues. Have you ever had to deal with this kind of situation? How did it go? Do you see this decision as dangerous?
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