
The 19-year-old jailed for the crime of sarcasm - Uperte
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352432/free-justin-carter-now-charles-c-w-cooke
======
zaroth
I know articles like this bring out the trolls, but I can't get over the sheer
number of commenters (on the target site) happy to see Justin being 'taught a
lesson', or claiming that his speech was truly criminal.

What hits me the hardest about this story is that, what if an HN post of mine
strikes the wrong nerve and next thing they're coming for me? Maybe next
they'll be coming for you. Or 15 years from now my kid makes a dumb post and
they come for him.

The Supreme Court was pretty clear this kind of speech is protected, and yet
here we are with Justin behind bars. By the way, how the hell does bail get
set at $500,000 for a single Facebook comment, no matter how insensitive or
inciteful?

You might be interested in contacting the DA who filed the charges, Jennifer
Tharp, [http://tharpda.com/](http://tharpda.com/). Apparently she made her
first comment on the case yesterday, although I can't find a direct link to
her written statement: "Comal County District Attorney Jennifer Tharp says in
a statement that Justin Carter could get 'community supervision or probation'
if that is determined to be in the 'best interest of the defendant and
society."

What Justin should get is sent home with an apology, and perhaps a nice
settlement check down the road. I hope while Jennifer is out enjoying her 4th
of July, celebrating our independence day, she can spare a moment to think
about how she's managed to trample the constitutional freedoms that so many
Americans have given their lives to defend.

I better be careful not to wish any ill will upon her for her role in this
travesty of justice, since, you know, I wouldn't want to be accused of making
'terroristic threats'. So let's just say I hope it's raining in Comal County
today.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
I would wish her a swift expulsion from office for gross incompetence, except
that this type of brainless bureaucrat really does represent the people who
elect them.

We live in a post-literate, lawsuit driven society where such officials are
simply following the path of least resistance.

I hope the parents have some really good lawyers. This thing may have to go up
the chain to their Senator and perhaps a federal court of appeals, before this
kid is exonerated.

As for that woman who turned him in to the police and effectively ruined his
life, I'd say she deserves a nice, fat civil suit.

~~~
zaroth
He had a public defender, but recently got Donald Flanary to take the case pro
bono. I don't know anything about Flanary, but reports indicate this is a
positive development, and it seems he was able to get some traction.

I think fundamentally the woman did nothing wrong, if it was truly a case of
an unrelated person showing concern. If it turns out she had some more
nefarious reason to throw Justin to the wolves (there's no evidence of this)
then have at her.

A more tech literate police force would have pointed and laughed, but that's a
pipe dream. Where I feel the system truly failed is in getting past the DA,
past the grand jury, and past the judge with the $500,000 bail.

~~~
jxcole
Hate to downvote an otherwise very informative post, but tech literacy is not
an issue here. If this was a hundred years before facebook existed and someone
joked "Oh yes I'm insane, I am going to stab a hundred babies...ha ha ha" it
would be the exact same issue.

~~~
zaroth
You're right, 'tech literacy' isn't really the right words, more like
'cultural literacy' where the correct "frame of reference" in this case is
MMORPG banter. Or what the courts might refer to as 'community standards'.

It's been a while since my one and only anthropology course, but the basic
idea is actions and language can only be understood through a common
perceptual framework between the speaker and the listener. Actions which are
otherwise benign, or even loving, can seem violent or insane when the observer
lacks the proper 'frame'.

One great example of this, if you're a fan of Orson Scott Card, is the humans
struggling to understand the Pequeninos in Xenocide, the 3rd book in the
Ender's Game series.

This is why, when I hear the statement was made in the context of a MMORPG, it
immediately alters my opinion on whether Justin had mens rea (criminal intent)
when he wrote the post. A hundred years ago, if communities didn't exist where
this type of dialog was typical, the same words actually take on a different
meaning -- one that might actually indicate a need for intervention!

------
cloverich
So, i'd like to get the _full_ details of this seemingly outrageous situation.
After somewhat extensively searching, I've never found what he actually said;
only paraphrasing, etc.

That's the difference between an obvious joke and... something different. Not
that it justifies the situation entirely (or maybe at all), but would perhaps
explain the reaction. Consider a similar poster who did an AMA on reddit here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1hl4gi/ive_been_raided...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1hl4gi/ive_been_raided_by_the_fbi_ama/)

After reading the actual transcript
([http://pastebin.com/Ldtj6mhx](http://pastebin.com/Ldtj6mhx)), many
Redditor's sided with the police.

So - not to take the side of the incarceration, but I certainly find it odd
that I can't find the actual FB threat / comments (yet?).

~~~
GuiA
I believe the exact details are all here; he typed (in the fairly popular MMO
`League of Legends`):

 _Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school
full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts._

 _lol_

 _jk_

~~~
ams6110
In response to someone calling him "insane." In that context it's pretty clear
this was a sarcastic response.

~~~
rfnslyr
Anyone who has ever played video games even pseudo seriously knows that
comment is just scraping the bottom of the barrel. So much worse shit is said
daily in games like WoW/CS/League/anything competitive. It's mind boggling
that someone took his comment this seriously.

I hope he sues whoever he has to sue and lives out the rest of his life in
absolute comfort.

I'd be paranoid forever online because of this. Spending this much time in
jail at such a young age for such a mundane comment is... I don't even know.

~~~
brazzy
It has never occurred to you that what's really wrong here is that such
comments are ever, under any circumstances mundane, normal and to be expected?

------
singular
This is ridiculous, outrageous, insane.

Terrorism is less likely to happen to you than a great many extremely unlikely
events, I can't find a citation right now but I suspect it's less than being
struck by lightning, yet the risk justifies... this?

The odds of being struck down by a careless driver must be vastly higher, yet
I don't see people who text as they drive being sent to jail for >= 10 years,
or those with driving licenses who are suspected of being higher risk (older
people, those on higher insurance risk bands, etc.) being monitored illegally
(or 'legally' based on dubious laws) and/or shipped off to a coaling station
[0] where their legal rights are effectively suspended and they are tortured
[1] to get information about their alleged membership of a boy-racer
organisation.

Oh, and if this law was in effect in my country (UK), I'd be serving several
years in jail. The irrationality of this kind of bullshit hasn't prevented
people from trying to ruin people's lives over it, however [2].

What I'd like to see is the humourless 'people' who report this kind of
obvious bullshit prosecuted for wasting police time and perhaps even
harassment (I can't think of anything more harassing than trying to send
somebody to jail + near enough ruin their life over something that is
obviously not serious), the prosecutors who actually take it seriously losing
their jobs and the politicians who implement these laws being publicly grilled
on them.

[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_bay#US_Control_of_Gu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_bay#US_Control_of_Guantanamo_Bay)

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#T...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#Torture)

[2]: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
england-19009344](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19009344)

~~~
mig39
Toddlers killed more Americans this year than Terrorists did. Time for a war
on toddlers.

[http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/toddlers-
killed-...](http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/toddlers-killed-more-
americans-terrorists-did-year)

~~~
antihero
Well the obvious argument for that is that the terrorists didn't kill people
because all these powers allowed us to stop them.

------
jccc
On the off chance that anyone here is new to the story: He's been given
concussions, black eyes, stripped and held in solitary confinement.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/03/198129...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/03/198129617/teen-
jailed-for-facebook-comment-reportedly-beat-up-behind-bars)

------
duncan_bayne
This deserves to be on the home page for a number of reasons, including the
quality of the writing:

> Nevertheless, a woman in Canada, who inexactly described

> herself as a “concerned citizen,” ...

>

> The heirs to the constitutional settlement of the late

> eighteenth century are as entitled to its bounties as

> were its architects — idiot boys included.

~~~
alexholehouse
I know Charlie from back in the UK - I don't always agree with his writings
and ideas, but I can't deny he's one of the finest journalistic authors I've
had the pleasure of reading online.

------
csense
This article raises a multitude of issues.

Issue number one: The problematic ways that the prison system deals with
assault and mental illness among inmates.

Issue number two: Whether the potential sentence for a crime purely involving
speech, rather than actions, should be so severe as eight years in prison.

Issue number three: Whether the speech in question was Constitutionally
protected satire, or a criminal threat.

Issue number four: Whether the defendant should have gotten some slack from
the justice system -- i.e. why the police/prosecutors/court involved haven't
determined by now that lesser charges/penalties are appropriate.

I'm sure there are more.

I cross-posted this comment from another HN submission on the same case with
only a few upvotes,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5987867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5987867)

------
brandonhsiao
I think the fundamental problem here is that the government doesn't really
care if a 19-year-old needlessly goes to jail. Imagine things from their point
of view. If an innocent 19yo goes to jail, it costs them virtually nothing. If
they let him go, and he ends up actually shooting up a school, they have a lot
more to lose.

It's the same reason they're ok with torturing suspected terrorists. Better to
err on the conservative side for the entire country than to respect an
individual's rights and risk the next 9/11.

I'm bringing this up as a problem, not as a justification. I'd be interested
if anyone knows how to fix this.

~~~
medde
They could use their illegal NSA spying programs and bring out some proofs
that he was not kidding?

------
geetee
All parents in the USA should be fearful that their child will be torn away
when they too say something so childish.

------
wavesounds
"He’s been incarcerated since March without trial."

That's the problem. A jury of his peers would throw this out no questions
asked.

~~~
rayiner
I wouldn't count on it. It was some uptight woman who saw the comment and told
the police in the first place, and you can bet its the fear of uptight parents
that's causing the prosecution. Can you imagine how the shit would hit the fan
if the kid had said something like that, the police had been notified, and the
police had done nothing, and the kid had shot up some school?

~~~
blisterpeanuts
But that's exactly the problem -- some fearful little officials saying, "But
what if he meant it?"

An intelligent chief of police and prosecutor should have looked at the kid's
background, maybe dropped by his house, and said, OK there's no "there" there.
Unless there's a history of violence, or record of mental illness, or
sociopathic behavior officially noted, etc. Which as far as I know, there
isn't in this case. Just pure blind, stupid bureaucratic grinding an
individual with their jackboots, simply because they have the power.

~~~
rayiner
I don't know if you remember high school, or more specifically other peoples'
parents, but it doesn't ring true to me to blame the bureaucracy with their
"jackboots."

Parents are fucking nuts, suburban parents doubly so. This is some town
outside of San Antonio--you think these police officials are acting out of
step with what most of the local parents want?

~~~
blisterpeanuts
See my earlier comment :)

------
ja27
It reminds me of Michael Diana, convicted for drawing comics.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Diana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Diana)

------
alexvr
It's only illegal for him to say such a thing if he also has a few machine
guns and other preparations ready to go. Such statements, even with the
appended "jk lol," deserve question. But I don't see how authorities managed
to do anything more than question or search him.

~~~
xauronx
Seems to me more like he needed a councilor and a talking to from his parents,
but maybe the police did find the means to follow through with these
statements in his home. This is all outrage-inducing non-information.

~~~
zaroth
The police did not find means to follow through with the statements. They did,
however, confiscate his computer.

------
octo_t
"Normally this wouldn't be the kind of story we run, but given the
misconception that Carter's comments were made within a game and that League
of Legends had anything to do with this, we felt compelled to dispel the
inaccurate information. According to lieutenant Wells, the comments were left
on the Facebook page of someone unknown to Carter"

[http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/07/01/was-a-...](http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/07/01/was-
a-league-of-legends-player-arrested-for-trolling-not-exactly.aspx#.UdH-
NhHVMWY.twitter)

------
pestaa
If I were a cop, they'd only have to send me to 2, maybe 3 cases like this
before I'd lose complete faith and resign.

~~~
lmm
That's why people like you aren't cops.

------
DVassallo
What would happen if a bunch of people were to tweet Justin's facebook message
verbatim? [1] Since it would seem impractical to put everyone in jail, how
does the legal system typically deal with such a situation?

\---

[1] This article seems to quote the intact message that got Justin in this
trouble:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/03/198129...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/03/198129617/teen-
jailed-for-facebook-comment-reportedly-beat-up-behind-bars)

------
ethanazir
This idea of preventing crime is like pre-emptive strike doctrine.

------
dobbsbob
Schneier always writes about overreactions that happen after every major
tragedy or high profile criminal act
[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/this_weeks_ove...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/this_weeks_over.html)

If this kid was trolling Runescape now nobody would care

------
crististm
"in free countries such as the United State" \- that's a joke Americans forgot
what freedom looks like.

~~~
r00fus
Freedom® (tm) - Now licensable at a low yearly cost. Subject to restrictions.

------
rmrfrmrf
_must_ we focus on the genders of every party involved in these types of
discussions?

~~~
penrod
And more broadly, _must_ we refer to sex as 'gender'?

------
tn13
If this goes to show anything that it is that the administration is full of
incompetent and insecure people who will thrash hardest to someone who cant
hit them back.

------
Confusion
Twitter, Facebook and similar services have provided people with easy ways to
voice their thoughts at whim. We are now confronted with what everyone should
already have known: that people have a lot of irrelevant, illogical,
uninteresting, confusing and reprehensible thoughts. I sure do.

Every teen has at one occasion thought: I feel like killing [everyone in
school, my team, my so-called friends, my brother, the neighbour dog, ...].
Writing such a thought down gives it extra power. A screen doesn't confront
you with _people_ , which would make your brain stop and think, so it is easy
to misjudge whether you can and should press 'send'.

Monitoring that speech and acting on it, directly by the government or
indirectly via 'concerned citizens': that way lies police state insanity. It
means the system, and many of the people in it, is in denial of the complex,
inconsistent nature of humans. They want clear rules, easy judgments, binary
divisions between right and wrong. They lose sight of what 'being human'
means: a huge variety of things, not all of them pretty, but all of them
_human_.

------
koalakid
I'm going to be downvoted into oblivion for this comment, then my account will
be hellbanned by the mods, but whatever: this guy's posting was jarringly
violent and disturbing.

I believe most people would never fathom ideas so evil, and yet this guy
broadcasted it in the most public space in the known universe - FACEBOOK.

The guy needs correction, _badly_.

~~~
zaroth
Jarringly violent and disturbing -- sort of like a certain (or any?) Quentin
Tarantino movie that grossed over $100m world wide?

Most people would never fathom ideas so evil? Obviously false and useless
hyperbole. Which is why you would deserve the downvotes.

What you fail to grasp is the entire concept of protecting speech, why it's so
essential to a functioning democracy, and why your personal opinion of a
paragraph of text being 'violent' or 'disturbing' is completely irrelevant.

We're talking about locking up a young man behind bars. Taking away his
liberty, possibly taking away his ability to earn a living. It's not a stretch
to say that his life is on the line, because of how a paragraph of text made
you _feel_.

All this is further compounded by the highly political decision about what
type of speech may be 'too violent' or 'too disturbing' to be legal. I can't
fathom how an informed American can honestly argue that we should criminalize
the act of typing a few words on your keyboard, and posting them on Facebook,
when those words don't constitute an intentional and imminent threat to a
specifically identified individual. (see, for example,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio))

