9th Circuit overturns conviction of man who made Super Bowl threats

[alp227]

Source: Los Angeles Times

An Arizona man who plotted to randomly kill football fans at the 2008 Super Bowl but changed his mind after arriving at the stadium with an assault rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition had his conviction overturned Monday by a federal appeals court panel.

The 2-1 decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Kurt William Havelock wasn't guilty of mailing threatening communications to any individual person, as the law requires, because his lengthy rant about what drove him to plot a massacre was addressed to media organizations.

The ruling disclosed Havelock's detailed plans to shoot arriving spectators to express outrage at having been denied a liquor license to open a horror-themed bar in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe — a massacre apparently averted only because Havelock had a last-minute change of heart.

Havelock, then 35, was charged with six counts of mailing threatening communications to a person. Just before he drove to a parking lot at the University of Phoenix stadium half an hour before the Super Bowl kickoff, Havelock had stopped at a nearby post office to drop off Priority Mail envelopes containing a rambling "manifesto" and other documents addressed to six media organizations, including the Los Angeles Times.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-superbowl-plotter-20100824,0,7209107.story

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Wow...but Arizona's biggest concern? THE MEXICANS!!!!!! Never mind guys like Havelock or the three prison escapees.

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. Nice point of law. State criminal threatening laws...

...usually have the same requirement. Had a mock trial case this fall that turned on whether posting a clearly threatening drawing visible on the internet via a fictitious FaceSpace page, but not actually sending a link via an e-mail, e.g., to the person threatened, met the law.

You have to utter the threat to the person threatened.

[Javaman]

2. No one else finds this darkly ironic?

"The ruling disclosed Havelock's detailed plans to shoot arriving spectators to express outrage at having been denied a liquor license to open a horror-themed bar"