Dumb gamer trash talk gets Texas teen indicted for terrorism.

[kelticpete]

So a 19 year old gamer was trash talking on facebook.

 

someone reported him and in comal county where he lives, the DA indicted him for terroristic threats.

 

here is a petition about it.

 

https://www.change.org/p/release-my-son-justin-carter-being-prosecuted-for-a-facebook-comment?recruiter=10226589&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

 

 

here is what he said. and had to pay 500,000 bail for. but could not. and spent 4 months in jail for until an anonymous donor helped.

 

 

http://www.gameskinny.com/ydr6b/what-happened-to-justin-carter-league-of-legends-terrorist

Edited July 7, 2015 by kelticpete

[DoctorKaizeld]

he seems like hes got some issues

[kelticpete]

yes, qwertz. definitely not a poster boy for emotional health. but being an angry dipshit/mentally not well person who is not actually making a real threat is not different from being a really nice guy who just blew up one time and is not making a real threat. not a real threat is not a real threat. period.

 

 

 

even angry assholes are protected by the law as long as they don't act on it or make specific threats. look at the fact that his specific threat to harm an ex-girlfriend was simply met not with jail but a restraining order.

 

I have known two women whose husbands said they would kill them who told police, who then did nothing for them until the dudes beat the crap out of them.

 

so a husband says "I will f***ing kill you." and the police do nothing. this kid does not name a specific school/target nor does he own a gun and they throw the book at him.

 

I worked with addicts and the mentally ill for 5 years. I met lots of people who threatened to kill themselves, sometimes even other people. lots of the people who threatened to hurt themselves did or would.

 

But every week we got in at least patient who had scared someone enough with a death threat to be put in our 3 day hold to see if they were an actual danger. in 5 years, all of the threats were idle. Just really pissed off people in emotional pain. I have had had friends go off on political rants on facebook where they said all kinds of violent threats which I knew were just them being assholes (most of them no longer facebook friends).

 

I am not someone who does not think the Internet can be and is a place where real threats happen. On imdb I got stalked by a dude who threatened to find me and made scary personal threats.

 

But this 19 year old got sexually assualted and spent 4 months in jail already for a facebook rant.

Edited July 7, 2015 by kelticpete

[DoctorKaizeld]

i agree he shouldnt need to pay such a large fine, but it's very reasonable to arrest someone for talking about shooting up a Kindergarten. it doesnt matter if they werent going to actually do it. enough people have said things like that and went through with it.

[kelticpete]

I totally agree some law enforcement involvement would be prudent. If I was the justice system I would have put him on 3 day psych hold. If he did seem dangerous I would try to leverage him/his family with a plea to a misdeamor where he agreed to treatment. Like what if They found he had a gun and had talked about shooting at a school before. But he had not.

 

any fair da would have to admit that his stupidity is not criminal. Especially given the context of the fact that it was in a give and take of trash talk where he said lol.

 

 

A random post that said the same thing would be way more credible a threat, at least to me. He is still banned from Internet and can't live with own siblings.

[DoctorKaizeld]

 

I totally agree some law enforcement involvement would be prudent. If I was the justice system I would have put him on 3 day psych hold. If he did seem dangerous I would try to leverage him/his family with a plea to a misdeamor where he agreed to treatment. Like what if They found he had a gun and had talked about shooting at a school before. But he had not.

agreed, he didnt break a law he just caused a scare

[kelticpete]

Funny thing is that arresting someone you May never charge is a tactic both used for good and bad. You can do it to shake loose evidence or make someone agree in legal document to get treatment. But I had a friend who called her landlord a b&@*$. She was arrested 2 hours later for "verbal assault". She was held a few hours and then the DA said "are you kidding?" The landlord had cop friends. They just did it to be assholes.

 

 

She later found out there is no "verbal assault " law she was actually hauled in on the pretext of disorderly conduct.

[Lisnpuppy]

If he was held for a terrorism charge then the rights of a citizen kinda go out the door. I almost wonder if this, is in part, a test to see how much information they can obtain on someone's online activities.