According to the Texas Penal Code, a person can be charged with the offense of terroristic threat if he/she “threatens to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property with intent to place any person in fear of imminent, serious bodily injury.”
This is a class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 180 days in county jail and/or a maximum $2,000 fine. However, if the threat is made against a member of the family or a public servant, the charge becomes a class A misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to 1 year in county jail and/or up to a $4,000 fine.
Usually, this sort of offense is the result of an argument between two people in an amorous relationship. Therefore, if you have an argument with someone else, be careful what you say. Saying that you are going to kill someone or that you are going to seriously hurt someone with the intent to scare the other person, even if you don’t plan to hurt that person, might actually place you in a bind.
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Has the cornerstone phrase of our justice system turned into a meaningless cliche? Innocent until PROVEN guilty is frequently muttered by prospective jurors during jury selection. Five seconds later, the same juror is “undecided” on whether the defendant is guilty and the EVIDENCE portion of the trial has not even begun.
Here is another less-known saying, “you can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.” Simply put, whether you are innocent or not, going through the criminal justice system is going to hurt in many ways. A defendant has to battle stress, anxiety, judgment by others, and financial strain of bonding out of jail and hiring an experienced criminal defense lawyer.
For example, ABC 13 reported that a well respected Harris County Judge was indicted for official oppression this past week. At some point we will learn what the evidence is and how strong of a case the District Attorney has against the Judge. Either way, the ride has already begun to take a toll.
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The Houston Chronicle reported this morning that a Houston-area criminal defense lawyer, whose client is accused of injury to a child in the death of a four-year-old child, is seeking the identities of people who posted comments about the case in online discussion forums at websites of The Houston Chronicle, the Conroe Courier, KHOU-TV (Channel 11) and KTRK-TV (Channel 13). On the one hand there is a societal interest in protecting the privacy rights of those who post comments on the internet. There are many legitimate reasons why a person might wish to remain anonymous in posting a comment in a discussion forum. For example, a person might fear retribution from a crazy, unknown individual who is offended by a comment or who misinterprets the comment. A person might wish to share a private experience for the benfit of other people who are going through the same thing. Or, a person might have a question about a frightening medical condition and the person might want to obtain the needed information anonymously. Allowing wholesale disclosure of online identities might have a chilling effect on people with legitimate reasons for posting anonymously on the internet.
But the right to privacy is not absolute and it should not trump an individual’s constitutional right to a fair trial. Too often people aligned with certain advocacy groups will flood public discussion forums with comments that appear calculated to undermine an accused’s right to a fair trial, which includes an impartial jury panel. At times it may be tempting for police officers, detectives and others associated with the prosecution of a case to participate in relevant discussion forums. If people with inside information about a case (or people connected with those same individuals) decide they wish to comment publically about a case, they should be prepared to do so in a court of law. An accused has the right to confront and cross-examine all of the witnesses against him.
Do you still believe the right to online anonymity is or should be absolute? Judges routinely permit subpoenas of internet service providers (ISP), whose customers are suspected of criminal activities over the internet. The same judges routinely sign search warrants to allow police to search the homes and business of ISP customers, once their identities have been revealed through the subpoenaed records.
But what about people who aren’t even accused of criminal wrongdoing? How anxious would any of us be to stop a subpoena for the online identity of an anonymous poster, if it appeared that the poster knew the whereabouts of a kidnapped child? I am interested to hear what others have to say.
Very truly yours,
Grant Scheiner (Not Anonymous)
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