Lawyer properly convicted of threatening his former partners

When does the First Amendment allow you to make threats against other people? When do these threats become "true threats" that are not protected under the Constitution? A lawyer who threatened his former colleagues just found out.

The case is United States v. Dennis, issued on March 21. Defendant was charged with cyberstalking his former law firm partners. They had a falling out of some kind. The jury found him guilty. On appeal, he argues that his missives were not enough to convict because they were not a "serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence," a legal standard clarified in Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003). The Court of Appeals partially agrees with Dennis, but the overall guilty verdict remains.

After Dennis was ousted from the partnership in 2019, he sent electronic communications to his former partners: "u r going to get yours," "you are going to wish you never met me," he would "chase down" his former partner's minor children for the "sins of the father," and "people will be dying daily for the next year," and the children's school will "watch . . . daily along with me." He told another partner that she was "toast," he was "coming for" her, and she should "sleep with one eye open." There were many other such comments.

The Second Circuit (Raggi, Wesley and Khan) joins other circuits in stating that the cybercrime statute must be interpreted under the "true threats" principle to avoid any free speech intrusions. Under this principle, the conviction against Dennis for his communications for Bicks, a former partner, is sound. 

Some of the comments referenced above were sent to Bicks, among thousands that Dennis sent to him, as many as a hundred in a single day, sometimes late at night. The comments were just plain violent and threatening in a biblical way and made reference to mass shootings and Bick's children. These comments left Bicks terrified. Dennis's threats against another partner, Bostick, were similar, and also constituted true threats, the Court says. Some of the comments were racist. There is no way the federal courts are going to tolerate threats like this. 

Bad comments to another former partner, Cottle, however, were not enough to convict Dennis of cyberstalking because these comments, while distressing, were not a true threat in that, for example, Dennis accused Cottle of ingratitude and said, I cannot wait until the next time I hear you talking about brotherhood with someone."

Other issues: the jury charge was not perfect, but Dennis never objected to it, so the standard of review is plan error, a difficult standard to meet. No new trial is warranted because the court finds that even if the jury were properly charged, it still would have rendered a verdict against Dennis. While Dennis also makes evidentiary challenges, those fail under the "abuse of discretion test." While Dennis claims the judge made prejudicial comments about him at trial (having to do with Dennis representing himself pro se after firing his court-appointed lawyers and provoking the judge to correct some of Dennis's mid-trial comments to the jury), that argument is rejected as well under the difficult standard of review guiding such an appellate claim.