[zaroth]

He had a public defender, but recently got Donald Flanary to take the case pro bono. I don't know anything about Flanary, but reports indicate this is a positive development, and it seems he was able to get some traction.

I think fundamentally the woman did nothing wrong, if it was truly a case of an unrelated person showing concern. If it turns out she had some more nefarious reason to throw Justin to the wolves (there's no evidence of this) then have at her.

A more tech literate police force would have pointed and laughed, but that's a pipe dream. Where I feel the system truly failed is in getting past the DA, past the grand jury, and past the judge with the $500,000 bail.

[jxcole]

Hate to downvote an otherwise very informative post, but tech literacy is not an issue here. If this was a hundred years before facebook existed and someone joked "Oh yes I'm insane, I am going to stab a hundred babies...ha ha ha" it would be the exact same issue.

[zaroth]

You're right, 'tech literacy' isn't really the right words, more like 'cultural literacy' where the correct "frame of reference" in this case is MMORPG banter. Or what the courts might refer to as 'community standards'.

It's been a while since my one and only anthropology course, but the basic idea is actions and language can only be understood through a common perceptual framework between the speaker and the listener. Actions which are otherwise benign, or even loving, can seem violent or insane when the observer lacks the proper 'frame'.

One great example of this, if you're a fan of Orson Scott Card, is the humans struggling to understand the Pequeninos in Xenocide, the 3rd book in the Ender's Game series.

This is why, when I hear the statement was made in the context of a MMORPG, it immediately alters my opinion on whether Justin had mens rea (criminal intent) when he wrote the post. A hundred years ago, if communities didn't exist where this type of dialog was typical, the same words actually take on a different meaning -- one that might actually indicate a need for intervention!

[tomlu]

You shouldn't downvote a post because you don't agree with it anyway. You should downvote it because it doesn't add anything to the discussion or is otherwise vapid. It follows that there should never be a reason to downvote and reply to a comment.

[rapind]

Are you sure about that? Comments like the one this kid made are rampant in certain immature areas of the internet. If you're used to that sort of thing, it's more of a bad taste issue than an actual threat.

I.e. Oprah and http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-over-9000

[gtirloni]

The police and the DA are afraid of this kid being a real threat down the road. They imagine that if what he said really happens, they will lose their jobs and have some very bad publicity (because the US society expects that it can avoid all and every crime so it moves the machinery in that direction adding more stupid laws, more law enforcement, more spying, etc, etc, etc). So for the Police and DA it's much easier to throw this kid in the jail and, if it was a mistaken, then 1) they can say they were overprotectice and 99.999% of the population will thank them for it and 2) the fat paycheck for this kid will not come from their salary.

If the police officers and the DA to get booted from their jobs for this mistake, then some other public figure / wannabe politician will use the current society paranoia state to point at the elected officials and say they don't care about people's security and blablabla.. the masses let it all happen and the policitians need the masses.

We're in a sad state of affairs these days but I suppose it has always been like that since before humans even started to talk.