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Cops always make mountains out of molehills!!!!
9th Circuit affirms conviction reversal in 2008 Super Bowl threat by Michael Kiefer - Jan. 6, 2012 08:42 PM The Republic | azcentral.com The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday reiterated an earlier decision reversing the federal convictions of a man who sent the press a confused manifesto about a mass shooting he never carried out. Kurt Havelock thought he was going to shoot up the 2008 Super Bowl with an assault rifle and be killed in the process. On Feb. 3, 2008, he took his rifle and ammunition clips to University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, but he changed his mind at the last minute, called his parents and turned himself in to Tempe police, who weren't certain he had actually committed a crime. Nonetheless, that September, he was convicted by a federal jury of six counts of mailing threatening communications for letters he dropped in a mailbox and sent to the media right before he came to his senses. He was sentenced to a year in prison -- most of which he had already served -- and three years of probation. But, in September 2010, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals ruled that the letters, which were filled with apocalyptic verbiage and an explanation of his planned actions, did not rise to the level of threats because they were not addressed to any particular person. Prosecutors asked the 9th Circuit to reconsider the ruling en banc; that is, by a larger panel of judges. On Friday, in an 10-1 decision, the en banc panel reached the same conclusion: Havelock's letters sent to the media were a manifesto of sorts but addressed to no one person and therefore not a threat to any one person. "Writing and mailing off to the media a largely incomprehensible diatribe with vague allusions to evil acts that the author intended to have accomplished by the time his Manifesto was received was the unwise act of a trouble mind," three judges opined. "It was not, however, criminal behavior" as specified in the statutes. Furthermore, they wrote, even if Havelock had addressed the letters to individuals, they would have arrived at their destinations days after the acts he intended to commit. "A threat can refer only to a future, not a past, act; a threat is an act that is intended to put its subjects or objects in fear of an event to occur in the future. Put simply, a communication sent when and under the circumstances (of) Havelock's ... cannot induce fear of an impending event and is therefore not a threat." The Appeals Court sent the case back to the U.S. District Court in Phoenix to enter a judgment of acquittal. |