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"There's gotta be a way to better protect members of Congress."

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Originally posted by sdy:
why shouldn't people who threaten to kill lawmakers get prosecuted ?

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Originally posted by tatortodd:

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Originally posted by sdy:
why shouldn't people who threaten to kill lawmakers get prosecuted ?

Why shouldn't people who threaten to kill citizens get prosecuted? No special laws or treatment for Congressional Critters.

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Threats of Violence Against Individuals.—The Supreme Court has cited three “reasons why threats of violence are outside the First Amendment”: “protecting individuals from the fear of violence, from the disruption that fear engenders, and from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.”980 In Watts v. United States, however, the Court held that only “true” threats are outside the First Amendment.981 The defendant in Watts, at a public rally at which he was expressing his opposition to the military draft, said, “If they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.”982 He was convicted of violating a federal statute that prohibited “any threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States.” The Supreme Court reversed. Interpreting the statute “with the commands of the First Amendment clearly in mind,”983 it found that the defendant had not made a “true ‘threat,”’ but had indulged in mere “political hyperbole.”984

In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., white merchants in Claiborne County, Mississippi, sued the NAACP to recover losses caused by a boycott by black citizens of their businesses, and to enjoin future boycott activity.985 During the course of the boycott, NAACP Field Secretary Charles Evers had told an audience of “black people that any ‘uncle toms’ who broke the boycott would ‘have their necks broken’ by their own people.”986 The Court acknowledged that this language “might have been understood as inviting an unlawful form of discipline or, at least, as intending to create a fear of violence ....”987 Yet, no violence had followed directly from Evers’ speeches, and the Court found that Evers’ “emotionally charged rhetoric . . . did not transcend the bounds of protected speech set forth in Brandenburg… An advocate must be free to stimulate his audience with spontaneous and emotional appeals for unity and action in a common cause. When such appeals do not incite lawless action, they must be regarded as protected speech.”988 While holding that, under Bradenburg, Evers’ speech did not constitute unprotected incitement of lawless action,989 the Court also cited Watts, thereby implying that Evers’ speech also did not constitute a “true threat.”990