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Supreme Court· 6/1/2015

Elonis v. United States

Citations

  • 575 U.S. 723
  • 135 S. Ct. 2001
  • 192 L. Ed. 2d 1
  • 2015 U.S. LEXIS 3719
  • 25 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 287
  • 83 U.S.L.W. 4360
  • 43 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1749

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

  • holding that jury instruction requiring only negligence with respect to communication of threat, is not sufficient to support conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c)
  • holding that, under longstanding common-law principles, a federal anti-threat statute which does not contain an express scienter requirement implicitly requires proof of a mens rea level above negligence
  • holding that, under longstanding common-law principles, a federal anti-threat statute which does not contain an express scienter requirement implicitly requires proof of a mens rea level above negligence
  • concluding that a threat is committed negligently when the mental state turns on \whether a 'reasonable person' regards the communication as a threat-regardless of what the defendant thinks\
  • holding that 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), which criminalizes the transmission of threatening communications in interstate commerce, requires the government to prove that the defendant was aware of the'threatening nature of the communication
  • holding that when federal criminal statute is “silent on the required mental state, [courts] read into the statute only that mens rea which is necessary to separate wrongful conduct from otherwise innocent conduct” (internal quotation marks omitted)

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Robertsdelivered, Alito, Thomas

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

292 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

51 cases in this archive are cited by this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Other cases named Elonis v. United States

2 other CourtListener records share this case name.

Sourced from CourtListener / Free Law Project (CC0).

This is legal information, not legal advice. Laws vary by jurisdiction and change frequently. Always verify current law with official sources and consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction for advice on your specific situation.