Tim's Tips on Avoiding Prosecution

[Declan McCullagh]

On Sat, Sep 01, 2001 at 09:01:56AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
> Specificity matters. If someone with some ability to influence urges his 
> followers to "Kill Jews," and some of them begin to, expect an 
> "incitement" (and perhaps "conspiracy") charge to stick against the 
> speaker. If someone mere opines that Jews should be killled, protected 
> speech.

I suspect you may be right as a general rule. But if a federal prosecutor
(or a state one, for that matter), is going to bring charges against
someone for incitement or conspiracy in a case where some people have been
killed, I suspect that a "should be killed" line may be enough to garner
a conviction if you knew or should have known that folks would act on
what you say. In other words, your thought processes at the time and
your expectation of success matters.

This is just a hunch; I haven't researched the caselaw here.

-Declan