Social Media Harassment Case: Elonis V. United States

In today’s world, social media have a part in many people lives. Social media allow people to express themselves however and whenever they want. This is exactly what Anthony Elonis did. After a divorce Elonis claimed he adopted the rap persona Tone Dougie and posted long rants in the form of rap lyrics on Facebook. These rants expressed violence and killings. Elonis also stated “Art is about pushing limits, I’m willing to go to jail for my constitutional rights.” He also posts disclaimers or indications that his rants were aspired to be art or therapy .Although The First Amendment guarantees our right of free speech, a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone should be considered a threat whether its face to face or through social media. Freedom of speech end and become a specific threat to another person when you direct a violent act toward anyone. As a consequence of his Facebook post, Anthony D. Elonis was indicted with five counts of making threats.

The Supreme Court case, Packingham v. North Carolina (2016) debates whether convicted and registered sex offenders should be limited in their social media usage on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which are most predominantly populated by minors. The constitutionality of North Carolina’s criminal law is being debated as it considers it a felony for any person registered as a sex offender in the state of North Carolina to have an account on social media sites such as Facebook, or any social media platforms that allow minors to have an account. The current North Carolina law is unconstitutional as it limits a clear example of free speech, and does so in a very broad and unjustified way,

expressed or inappropriate without the regard to the speaker’s intended meanings is not protected in the First Amendment. Threats must be true in order to be legally actionable. A reasonable person must foresee that the statement would be interpreted by the recipient as a serious expression of intent to carry out the threat to cause harm. For example, the U.S. v. Voneida case. A university student was convicted of posting threats to others on a social media page two days after the shootings at Virginia Tech. The student had posted several statements and pictures to his Myspace page, including a number of violent statements, such as, “Someday I’ll make the Virginia Tech incident look like a trip to an amusement park,” and captioning a posting,

But, what amounts to a true threat? According to Justice Breyer, a true threat ­­is a threat that a “reasonable person” would understand to be a serious expression to hurt or harm (APC). Another question to be addressed is whether or not social media is within the freedom of speech rights. Take a case in St. Cloud, Minnesota, an employee complained about her workplace on social media and was fired for it. There are protections in the law for employees to talk about things of public concern or the conditions of the workplace, but only sometimes. Now the supreme court asks if a conviction of threatening someone under 18 U. S. C. §875 (c) requires proof of the defendant's subjective intent to threaten. This was the case for Virginia v. Black in 2003, the “reasonable person” test

The case, Elonis vs. United States, conveys that threats on social media are a crime. In this court case, the convict quoted a rapper’s song on social media towards his wife and the FBI. Whether or not the convict intentionally meant what he threatened, the representatives

Mr. Anthony Douglas Elonis aka “Tone Dougie” used social media, Facebook, he says to exercise his first amendment right, freedom of speech, shortly after his wife ended the relationship with him. He says that he was only expressing himself and did not intend to threat anyone, and feels he should not be punished for doing such. Though many people who knew him and saw his post felt threaten. His wife felt the need to seek out a state protection- from- abuse. His former boss also felt threaten because he previously had to fire Mr. Elonis for threatening his ex-co-workers. His former employer informed the FBI, they soon started monitoring his Facebook post and later charged

This can cause serious problems within the criminal justice system. Social media plays a massive role in the way that news is allocated within society. However, because of this large role it plays, it also interferes with the investigation and results of a particular criminal action. One can imagine how swiftly he or she learned about the horrific shooting incident that happened in Sandy Hook Elementary School or the unfortunate killing of Trayvon Martin and how George Zimmerman was prosecuted based on the public’s online response.

Social media can cause a lot of problems in people’s lives. When you are looking for a way to get in touch with your family and friends that’s when it’s good to be on social media. About 75% of people take advantages of social media when they post violent things, bully, or either embarrass someone. They should be bigger and better to think before they do something wrong. People should know when to post positive things and when not to post negative things. It would be better if people just scroll down

Social media can connect millions of people together, in any instant location. However, many of these platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, have blasphemous users who fire up heated debates, following up with explicit language. Such opinions often times involve incitement and defamation targeted against the opposing party. However, because the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, the U.S. Government has not strictly reprimanded the misuse of the amendment. Some citizens view hate speech as a form of speech that attacks and offends an individual or group based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or ethnic origin while others see it as a part of the First Amendment, and having it appealed, will precede with negative criticisms. There are others who are not concerned of the topic at hand completely which identifies how impactful this problem is. It has been apparent more so on social media, where people demonstrate their right to freedom of speech because they are more likely to voice their opinions individually when others are not present. The debate still continues to decide if the First Amendment should be revised due to hate speech on social media since it has promoted indirect violence, incivility amongst the online communities and has lowered ethical codes in the American society.

In today’s society, we as a nation showcase our lives through social media. The case, Elonis vs. The United States, the petitioner, Anthony Douglas Elonis, is no different. He was an inspiring rap artist and was using Facebook as a platform to share his lyrics. After his divorce, things got out of hand. He started to post threatful lyrics about his wife, co-workers, and a kindergarten school. One of his friends saw these post and decided to report it. The FBI ended up getting involved and before long Elonis found out and started to post about the FBI agent. The FBI then had enough of it, so they arrested him. At the lower court the jury of his peers felt that the post constituted a reasonable threat and sentenced him to 44 months in prison. He, of course, appealed it, sending it to the Supreme Court, saying that his intent was not threatful. The Supreme

Rick Jensen makes many clear points in this article. He warns us of the potential dangers of making ourselves public on social media that we would normally not even notice. Especially when it comes to commonplace crimes which we perceive as innocent behaviors in accordance to the law. However, his warnings can in some places be either misconstrued or by common sense be seen as paranoia and conspiracy theories.

These days, social media can play a major role in family law proceedings – especially child custody, support, and visitation cases. And while this content is often introduced in an effort to distract from a lack of “real” evidence, it can also be extremely persuasive. Below, an Anchorage, AK family law attorney from Gazewood & Weiner PC discusses the potential impact of social media on child custody cases.

A group of employees felt that they were overworked and underpaid, and took their rant to Facebook to engage in a discussion. The employees posted the following comments about their working conditions: “What the f… Try doing my job. I have 5 programs,” “Tell her to come do [my] f***ing job n c if I don’t do enough, this is just dum,” and “I think we should give our paychecks to our clients so they can ‘pay’ the rent…(insert sarcasm here now).” (Hill, 2011) As with the Ehling vs. Monmouth-Ocean Hospital case, a fellow employee was a friend to the individuals having the Facebook conversation, and shared the information with a supervisor. The supervisor fired all of the employees involved in the conversation, indicating that they were all in violation of the organization’s social media policy. “The judge decided that the heated Facebook conversation did not constitute harassment and that the non-profit erred in de-friending the workers. “Employees have a protected right to discuss matters affecting their employment amongst themselves,” wrote Judge Amchan in his decision, which orders the non-profit to rehire all five workers and make them “whole for any loss of earnings” suffered.” (Hill, 2011) Due to the fact that employees were discussing items that affect their work or working conditions, and that there were multiple people involved, this was a concerted activity, and qualified

With the creation of the Internet and the emergence of social media sites today many business and individual have fallen into libel/defamation suits because they believed they could post anything online, but defamation laws have been evolving with the Internet. In particular the laws have been established to ensure sites like Facebook or Twitter are not sued every time someone post defamatory content, but also so that these sites are not exempt when they contribute to the discussion. One of the first cases that helped to established redefined defamation laws for online was Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. in 1991.

On a more fundamental level, most of the ethical pitfalls related to social networking can be prevented by a little forethought and exercise of common sense, without regard to ethics rules. The qualities of social networking which are so potentially problematic for lawyers are its immediacy, its accessibility, and its permanency. As a result, like all users of social media, lawyers can react to a situation instantaneously and publicly, with an online posting that will remain on the internet in some form forever. Instead of sober reflection, social media encourages a reactionary and emotional post. Instead of one-on-one communication with a colleague or friend, social media encourages a broadcast to an expansive audience. Instead of ethereal and temporary communication, social media encourages an indelible post. You can get yourself into serious trouble by tweeting an emotional reaction to a judge's adverse ruling from your iPhone as you are walking out of the courthouse, instead of