But Is Threatening Trump On Social Media Considered A Serious Crime? Will he be locked up? (Read below to find answer to this question)Matt Harrigan at PacketsledMatt Harrigan is the CEO of PacketSled and Critical Assets and a board member for OWASP is calling for an assassination. Call the police, FBI, and the Secret Service! RIGHTVia Reddit The Donald:Harrigan wants Trump dead.Here are screen shots of his messages on social media:Harrigan later posted an apology on Facebook:My recent facebook comment was intended to be a joke, in the context of a larger conversation, and only privately shared as such. Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not engage in this form of rhetoric with any level of seriousness and the comment most certainly does not represent my real personal views in any regard. I apologize if anything that I said was either taken seriously, was offensive, or caused any legitimate concern. Best Regards, Matt Harrigan  GPTwo weeks before the 2008 election, a California man left a vicious message about Barack Obama on a Yahoo finance message board.  Re: Obama fk the niggar, he will have a 50 cal in the head soon.  He followed it up with another ugly post, which began simply:  Shoot the nig. There was more to come. On Election Day, the same poster sent disturbing emails about shooting someone that, as one court put it,  would appear to confirm the malevolent nature of the previous statements    as well as the poster s  own malignant nature. One of the message board participants reported the initial postings, and the Secret Service investigated. With Yahoo s help, it traced the messages to the home computer of Walter Bagdasarian, now 49, a resident of La Mesa, Calif. When agents searched his house, they found that he had weapons in his home, including a .50 caliber muzzle-loading rifle   the caliber of bullet the post said would soon be in Obama s head.In July of 2009, Bagdasarian was convicted of violating 18 USC s 879(a)(3), a federal law that makes it a felony to threaten a major presidential candidate with death or bodily harm. Last week, a federal appeals court in California reversed his conviction   which had gotten him sentenced to 60 days in a halfway house   ruling that his posts did not fall under the law, and that his speech was protected by the first amendment.United States v. Bagdasarian was the latest attempt by the federal courts to police the blurry line between criminal threats and protected speech   a line that has become more important than ever as the Internet has given rage-filled people unprecedented opportunities to spew hate.Regardless of how offensive it can often get, the courts are rightly reluctant to let political speech be criminalized. To be convicted under 879(a)(3), it is not enough that someone has made menacing statements. They have to have intended to threaten injury or death, and people viewing the words objectively have to regard them as threatening. In addition to these requirements under 879(a)(3), there is a separate first amendment test: the speaker s words must be a  true threat    which in this case the court defined as  a statement which, in the entire context and under all the circumstances, a reasonable person would foresee would be interpreted by those to whom the statement is communicated as a serious expression of intent to inflict bodily harm upon that person. The San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled, by a 2-1 vote, that Bagdasarian s posts did not meet these tests. The majority was deeply unhappy with Bagdasarian    an especially unpleasant fellow,  the court said   and his words. But the judges in the majority also insisted that the posts were not illegal. There was not enough evidence, they said, to find that Bagdasarian actually intended to put Obama at risk, or that a reasonable observer would think that he did. What s more, the posts were not  true threats.  The court contrasted Bagdasarian s words with those from another case, in which an enraged discharged employee posted threats like  I will kill you  and  I will personally send you back to the hell from where you came. For entire story: TimeI m no fan of Barack Obama, but I would never want to see someone threaten his life or the life of his family on social media, and believe strongly anyone who does should be punished accordingly. 