KD5NRH wrote:LaserTex wrote:Now, a day later...I am wondering if I might have done wrong by threatening even if I made no indication at all that I would or could follow up on the threat. Did I mess up?
ISTR some case law that essentially established that a conditional threat with a reasonable condition (i.e. something that you have the right to demand, like not stealing your property) is not actually a threat, regardless of the level of the "threatened" action.
Found some supporting documentation:
The encyclopedic digest of Texas Reports (Criminal cases) Vol 6, edited by Thomas Johnson Michie
"A threat to kill another, unless the party threatened would do or leave undone something which the party threatening had no right to require, is, in its legal effect, an unqualified threat. Hence, where the condition in the threat of defendant required something which, under the circumstances, he had no right to acquire, it amounted, in legal effect, to a positive threat to take life. McFain v. State, 41 Tex. 385, 390; Thrasher v. State, 3 Tex. Cr. App. 281; Haynie v. State, 2 Tex. Cr. App. 168."
It can safely be established that LaserTex was not requiring anything that he had no right to require, (that the other person not steal his groceries) so we can infer from this that the "unqualified threat" doesn't exist.
On the next page:
"Seriousness of Intention.—To constitute the offense of seriously threatening to take the life of another, it is not only necessary that the threat to take life be made, but it must also be seriously made. The test of the guilt or innocence of the defendant is whether the threat was seriously made, or was merely idle and with no intent of executing the same. McFain v. State, 41 Tex. 385; Longley r. State, 43 Tex. 490, 493; Buie v. State,
1 Tex. Cr. App. 58; Haynie r. State,
2 lex. Cr. App. 168, 176; March v. State, 3 Tex. Cr. App. 107; Vincent v. State, 3 Tex. Cr. App. 678; VVilkerson v. State (Cr. App.), 30 S. W. 807.
A party can not seriously threaten to take the life of another unless he has made up his mind to kill him, and has the will and intention to kill him, both concurring and formed in the mind at the time the threat is made. It is unreasonable and utterly inconsistent' to hold that a party can be serious in saying he intended to do a thing, and yet, at the same time, that that was not the thing he intended to do. Haynie v. State, 2 Tex. Cr. App. 168, 176."
Since LaserTex did not have, nor express, the will and intention to kill
unless and until the other failed to meet his reasonable demand, (and presumably not even then, unless the other escalated to robbery or other DF-justifying actions) one can easily argue that his threat was not serious by the definition above. As I'm reading it, this has also been used under California law to show that the threat was not imminent, in that it was not "ready to occur" until the condition was met or unmet.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, but if I could track this down in a few minutes, I'd expect that any lawyer worth paying for could come up with much better arguments by the time a court date arrived.