Appeals court upholds conviction in U.S. anthrax hoax
Jonathan Stempel, Reuters:
A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld the conviction of a California man for sparking a nationwide anthrax hoax in 2008, saying his mailings of sugar packets labeled as anthrax did not qualify as free speech.
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In his appeal, [Marc McMain] Keyser, 70, said that in showing the vulnerability of the United States to an anthrax attack, his mailings qualified as political speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and were not “true threats.”
The 9th Circuit disagreed. “A reasonable sender would foresee that recipients would understand the mailings to be threats to injure them,” Circuit Judge Richard Clifton wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.
Yes, that’s right. A political free speech defense for a disease hoax. That is a thing that happened.