The Supreme Court on Wednesday revisits a question the court has never answered: When is a threat a “true threat?” What does the prosecution have to prove? Does it have to show that the defendant intended to frighten his target, or is it enough to show that his words would have that effect on a reasonable person?
The case involves Coles Whalen, a singer-songwriter from Colorado, and Billy Counterman, a man convicted and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for “stalking” Whalen and making “true threats” against her.
How the messages escalated
Counterman’s messages to Whalen began in 2010 and heated up to a full boil in 2014, when police estimate he sent over a thousand messages to the singer — messages that ranged from affectionate to angry and aggressive, and gave the impression he was watching her.
“He was clearly mentally unstable,” Whalen said in an interview with NPR. “He believed that we were in a romantic relationship that lasted a number of years. He indicated that he was seeing me in person without me knowing it. And I was terrified.”
At one point, Counterman inquired about her mother after Whalen had just paid her mom a visit. At another, he wrote, “Die. Don’t need you,” and in another message he wrote, “I’m currently unsupervised. I know, it freaks me out too.”
Whalen repeatedly blocked him from her Facebook account, but he would create new accounts, even contacting her bandmates about her. She became so scared that he would emerge from a crowd, potentially lunging at her on stage, that she stopped publicizing her appearances, varied her routes, hired a body guard on one occasion and bought a pepper spray…
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