I am really mixed on this one: https://www.rawstory.com/trump-in-jail/

On the one hand seeing Trump in jail would please me greatly. On the other I'm left asking how a judge has the right to restrain free speech at all. saying someone should "rot in hell" outside of court and having that land you in jail seems like a huge violation.

#Trump #USPol

@freemo

Idk it seems like the whole point of having a court system is the first place is to prevent parties from being pressured to withdraw, drop the dispute, with public letter writing campaigns

Just STFU. When it’s over you can tell everyone how you’re poor now and your life is ruined. That’s free speech.

@jenny_wu Threatening people is illegal with or without a court order. If he said "this man should be murdered" then I would agree with you. But "he should rot in hell", no thats not even a threat.

@freemo @jenny_wu Taken very literally, "X should be murdered" is not a threat: it's simply a statement about a world you'd prefer to live in. Obviously that approach makes no sense, because then well-understood codes speech becomes a way to skirt around any laws prohibiting threats.

If one tries to include various coded threats, then the statement itself is not enough to detemine whether it's a threat: the whole point of coded speech is to make it easy to read for intended recipients and hard to convincingly convey to others, so it relies on lots of context.