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03-4081 U.S. v. Fuller

By: dmc-admin//November 1, 2004//

03-4081 U.S. v. Fuller

By: dmc-admin//November 1, 2004//

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“Even setting aside concerns for the President’s life, a threat disrupts the activities of the President, his advisors, and his security providers. Preventing these inconveniences and the costs associated with them was another reason for enacting § 871. H.R. Rep. No. 652, 64th Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1916) (stating that it is the duty of a government to protect its agencies from threats ‘which would tend to coerce them or restrain them in the performance of their duties’). Disruptions, inconveniences, and substantial costs occur regardless of whether a threat was subjectively intended to be carried out. To require subjective intent for conviction, then, thwarts this goal of the statute. See Rogers v. United States, 422 U.S. 35, 47-48 (1975) (Marshall, J., concurring) (‘Because [§] 871 was intended to prevent . . . the harm associated with the threat itself, I believe that the statute should be construed to proscribe all threats that the speaker intends to be interpreted as expressions of an intent to kill or injure the President.’); see also United States v. Kelner, 534 F.2d 1020, 1025 (2d Cir. 1976) (‘it is the utterance which the statute makes criminal, not the specific intent to carry out the threat’).”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, McKinney, J., Kanne, J.

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