In 2006, a Hannibal MO high school student, unhappy about being rejected by a girlfriend, sent an instant message to another friend about his desire to bring a gun to school and shoot several of his classmates. His threats were specific and the IMing student, who is referred to as D.J.M. in all court papers, made sure to tell the friend that he could easily get a gun. The friend got spooked and reported the IMs a school principal, who called in district officials and the cops. D.J.M. was suspended from school.
The student and his parents sued.
A three-judge panel for the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the school’s right to discipline D.J.M., and ruled that his threatening IMs were not protected speech.
No kidding!
There is admittedly a fine line in some of these kinds of cases, but not on this one. Mark Walsh of Ed Week has the details.
Here’s a clip:
[The court wrote,]”The First Amendment did not require the [school] district to wait and see whether D.J.M.’s [the student] talk about taking a gun to school and shooting certain students would be carried out,” said the court’s Aug. 1 opinion in D.J.M. v. Hannibal Public School District.
Court papers say D.J.M. was instant messaging with a friend in October 2006 when he discussed being romantically spurned by a female classmate. D.J.M. said he had access to a gun, and that while he would probably let the female friend live because “I still like her,” he named several specific students who he “would have to get rid of,” and he used anti-gay and racist epithets.
The student on the other end of the IM conversation, C.M., became concerned, and she passed along some of the comments to an adult friend, who contacted the principal of Hannibal High School. C.M. also passed along comments from D.J.M. that he “wanted Hannibal to be known for something,” that he had access to a gun, and that he might commit suicide after shooting his classmates.
School officials immediately contacted police, who took D.J.M. into juvenile detention. Meanwhile, D.J.M. was suspended for 10 days, and later for the rest of his sophomore year. The student and his parents sued the Hannibal district, alleging that the suspension violated his free-speech rights because the instant messages were conducted outside of school and were not meant as serious expressions of intent to harm anyone.
Despite the pressing need to revisit our nation’s schools’ problematic zero tolerance polices, which often do more harm than good, these IMs, as the court pointed out, were “true threats.” Any adult who ignored them would have been frighteningly irresponsible.
All that said, I hope the school administrators—and whatever other powers-that be who were involved—also made it their business to find out what was going on with “D.J.M” and thus offer him help as well as discipline.
The fact that, as the Hannibal Courier-Post reports, D.J.M. eventually returned to school and graduated ahead of his class is a heartening sign.
AND THE FUN FAMILY AWARD OF THE MONTH GOES TO….THIS GROUP WITH THE SHANKS IN THE BIRTHDAY CAKE
LA Now reports this cheery tale of a couple of brothers—Chong and Gary Vue— awaiting trial, one of whom attempted to pass a shank to the other one by embedding it in some birthday cake that he had in his cell, and talking a deputy into passing a piece to his brother, who was elsewhere in the Sacramento jail. Fortunately the deputy thought, Hey, wait a minute, maybe this isn’t such a swell idea..” and checked the cake out at which time the added….um…ingredients were discovered.
(So tell me again why brother number one got to have a birthday cake in his cell in the first place..?)
And what are the Vue brothers on trial for you might wonder? LA Now elaborates:
Chong Vue, 32, and Gary Vue, 31, are accused of shooting and killing Steve Lo, 39, at his Sacramento home in October 2008, just as Lo was leaving for his job as a state correction officer at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
Prosecutors said the two were carrying out a hit taken out by their older brother, Chue Vue, 46, a former Sacramento sheriff’s deputy. Chue Vue had discovered his wife was having an affair with Lo and retained his brothers to kill him, prosecutors say.
Chue Vue has already been convicted for arranging the murder of Lo. He is currently serving a sentence of life without parole.
The younger Vues, Chong and Gary, have previously been convicted of a gang murder in Minnesota.
Like I said, a fun family.
NOTE: Evidently the Sac Bee reporter Andy Furillo had the same question that I did about how the damned cake got into the cell in the first place. To wit:
It was unclear how the cake got in the cell or whether it was baked in the jail’s kitchen. Sheriff’s spokesman Jason Ramos said Tuesday that he has never heard of inmates at the downtown jail having cake in their cells.
“I would be very curious to look into it,” Ramos said. “Wow.”