Va. man pleads guilty to charge from blog posting
Va. man pleads guilty to charge from blog posting
Mercury News
August 14, 2009
A Roanoke man has pleaded guilty to charges he threatened a San
Francisco area transit policeman in an online posting.
U.S. Attorney Julia Dudley said 47-year-old Jeffrey Lynn Weaver pleaded
guilty Friday to one count of sending a threatening communication.
Prosecutors say Weaver threatened to kill the transit policeman and his
family in a blog posting on radio host Alex Jones' Infowars.com.
The threat came in a discussion of the officer's fatal shooting of an
unarmed man in an Oakland, Calif., subway station.
A spokesman for Dudley says Weaver also was charged with copyright
infringement after FBI agents found thousands of illegally downloaded
movies on his computer.
Weaver faces a maximum of six years in prison. Sentencing is set for
Nov. 16.
how ridiculous! is this what
how ridiculous!
is this what our country has come to?
how does a man in virgina pose a threat to a cop in san francisco?
perhaps if he had made some effort to come to california to do the killing this would be justified but otherwise this is an example of how ridiculous our government has become
So, does that mean if some
So, does that mean if some person ...on a web board made a Threat against you , your family ...etc You wouldn't take it seriously?
Or at least call the cops to make a report?
Just curious.
i guess it depends. was it a
i guess it depends.
was it a post on a message board or a private e-mail?
do they know my name and how to find me?
this kind of thing is why it is best to provide as little personal information as possible on the internet.
why is this guy such a fool
why is this guy such a fool to make death threats on a public forum on the internet?
if he made the threat, i think it needs to be investigated immediately. you can't wait until he mails a letter bomb or hires a local hitman. at that point it is possibly too late. so they seize his computer and nailed him on a bunch of illegal download charges. he got what he deserved. whether the threat was serious or not, we don't need morons like that roaming freely.
just because someone **says**
just because someone **says** something stupid does not make them a criminal
what next, are you going to start locking up anyone who thinks the wrong thing??
there is a word for that and it is fascism! laws like this just bring us closer and closer to "1984" and nazi germany.
if someone makes a threat to
if someone makes a threat to kill someone, they deserve to be locked up. end of story. sure, saying something stupid doesn't make someone a criminal, but when you threaten to kill someone you cross the line between stupid and insane.
if someone said they knew where you live and were going to kill you, you'd want that investigated... you might not say that you'd care because it hasn't happened to you. but i guarantee that if it really did happen to you your story would change.
They wouldn't arrest someone
They wouldn't arrest someone for just saying 'I'm gonna kill you'. It would have to be a lot more specific than that, to the point where you think they might have the capability to do it.
Weaver, who lived in the Bay
Weaver, who lived in the Bay Area of California for several years before moving back to Roanoke in 2002, posted the threat on the internet news discussion website “infowars.com.” Weaver, while in a discussion about a violent incident involving a San Francisco police officer, wrote, in part:
“...now that I know who he is and where he is its only a matter of time and his punishment will be to watch his B---- and his baby get wasted in front of him and then he joins the B---- and the baby in hell when I finish the job by wasting his Pigs—Ass.”
http://www.outlookseries.com/N2/Security/365_Jeffrey_Lynn_Weaver_Guilty_Threat_Kill_cop_Alex_Jones_Infowars.com.htm
that is pretty close to just saying "i am gonna kill you"
yeah it is totally stupid thing to say but... does it deserve 6 years in jail?
yes, that sounds like enough
yes, that sounds like enough to me. the issue is that a) he knows where they live and b) he made a threat that he would kill them.
if you don't like someone, you don't threaten to kill them. say you hate them or even say you hope they get hit by a bus or struck by lightning. but you don't threaten to kill them.
what happened to freedom of
what happened to freedom of speech?
or fairness in sentencing?
he is getting more jail time for __saying__ something than most men would for __raping__ someone.
i donot know about you but that sounds pretty f***ed up to me.
because free speech does NOT
because free speech does NOT cover death threats. in addition "free speech protection does not cover yelling fire in a crowded movie theater - knowing full well there is no fire. Likewise, using hate speech, fear tactics and stating your opinion that you wish someone was dead - adding to that making sure people knew where that person was located and how to bypass security - is also not an act of free speech. It is an act to incite violence."
and i don't think 6 years is too harsh. rape should be a mandatory life sentence, which would make 6 years for a death threat more in-line with penalties for rape in terms of severity of the crime to the jail time.
"rape should be a mandatory
"rape should be a mandatory life sentence"
haha oh wow
that is hilarious
you are clearly master chief
you are clearly master chief as you argue the exact same way. once you get defeated (proof that a death threat is not covered under free speech), you find something else to refute.
the discussion over rape sentences is completely off topic and was initiated by you, master chief. but for the record you are wrong. if you or someone you were close to was raped, i don't think you'd feel that a life sentence was harsh enough.
why do you continue to
why do you continue to persecute me for my anti-union beliefs?
i do not know why you must insist that i am someone else.
i am me and i have the same right to my opinion as anyone else.
and my mother was raped when she was in college so that shows how much you know.
10 years maybe but a life sentence is not appropriate at all and you are crazy for saying it.
and i did not initiate anything i just said that 6 years for saying something is stupid when you get much less time for _doing_ things
Yea there are lots of
Yea there are lots of alternatives to online threat. I think the worst I ever did was have an idiots utilities shut off, pizza deliveries, porn mailing lists and mags sent under the persons childrens names. With so many legal alternatives you never actually threaten or even know who is doing it.
It's actually amazing what happens when you put peoples email, phone and address on everything possible. I would not probably never do that again, even though the person deserved the years of telemarketers.
actually the things you did
actually the things you did constitute mail fraud, wire fraud, and other kinds of fraud, all of which are illegal
good thing i was a teenager
good thing i was a teenager back then.. But fraud? I legitimately wanted to send my "friends" free porn catalogs. I even think there was a box that said it was going to someone else. Even online mailing lists have boxes now for sending to a friend, then they can sell that friends e-mail to whoever they want.
There are zillions of websites out there to harvest physical, email and phone numbers legally.
lol jk