Court says man wasn't stalking when he vowed "justice" for ex-girlfriend on Facebook along with a photo of him with a gun

The Supreme Judicial Court spent considerable time considering a Facebook photo of Michael Walters holding a gun and another Facebook post in which he vowed, "Make no mistake of my will to succeed in bringing you two idiots [his ex and her current boyfriend] to justice" and concluded Walters may not have actually been threatening to shoot them, so he shouldn't have been convicted of stalking.

However, the court also upheld his convictions for criminal harassment, criminal violation of a domestic restraining order and perjury related to a campaign against the woman that included using equipment from his construction company to block off her driveway and garage with large boulders. He and a female friend made numerous trips into the house - under police supervision and allegedly to remove his belongings - and removed, among other things, the refrigerator, stove, bed and linens, and he disconnected the house's water main, after depositing human waste in its toilets. He also made repeated threats to have her new boyfriend kicked off his Rhode Island police force for alleged corruption and filed civil lawsuits against the two.

The ruling wipes his 3-4 year sentence for stalking, but keeps his 4 1/2 to 5 1/2-year sentences for the other charges.

The court acknowledged that online postings can constitute threats under the state's stalking law:

With new media, an individual can threaten, harass and stalk without ever leaving his or her home. Because it is easier to act outside of the public’s view, there is less pressure to comport with traditional social norms that may have previously curtailed truly threatening behavior.

But Walters' particular posts - he also posted a photo of Rihanna, a well known victim of domestic violence - didn't meet the "threat" standard, even though "it made [the victim] feel terrified."

To start, the court said, the posts were on his own Facebook page and he didn't tag the woman - she found the page after her new boyfriend figured that if the guy was posting details of her life on the Zillow page set up to sell her house, he might be posting stuff on Facebook and so went looking.

But after examining the posts, the court said they did not discern anything that should have put the woman in "imminent fear of death or bodily injury" as required by the stalking statute:

We begin by considering the photograph of the defendant holding a gun. The photograph itself contains no evidence of the defendant's intent to commit violence -- there is nothing obviously menacing about his facial expression in the photograph or the way in which he is depicted holding the gun across his lap, nor is there a caption of any kind that might suggest the photograph was intended to evoke violence. ... Even considering the photograph in light of the defendant's previous behavior around the victim involving guns, although his past actions might imply an intent to use guns to intimidate the victim, there was no evidence that the defendant had ever used a gun for a violent purpose in her presence, pointed a gun at her, or otherwise threatened physical violence toward her.30 Moreover, because the photograph was uploaded to the Facebook page in 2011, approximately three years after the last time that the victim saw the defendant with a gun, the relationship between the defendant's past behavior and the photograph is tenuous, especially considering that, given the defendant's status as a military veteran and apparently long-standing interest in guns, he could have intended the photograph to serve as an expressive statement regarding this status and interest.

Turning to the quotation on the page, "[m]ake no mistake of my will to succeed in bringing you two idiots to justice," in the circumstances of this case, it is reasonable to interpret the "two idiots" as referring to the victim and [the new boyfriend]. But even if one reads the sentence in combination with the photograph of the defendant, any particular violent message that might be attributed to the defendant from the presence of these two elements on the same page is speculative. Although the photograph depicts the defendant holding a gun, nothing else about that image suggests a clear intent to commit violence. Furthermore, like the photograph, the word "justice" is amenable to a reasonable, nonviolent interpretation, namely, that the defendant intended to pursue whatever legal means might be available to right wrongs he perceived the victim and [the new boyfriend] had inflicted on him.

Prosecutors argued that given that the page had little on it beside the photo, the statement, the Rihanna photo and a reference to police corruption, the entire page constituted a threat. But, the court answered:

We agree that the page as a whole could have come across as vaguely ominous or disturbing. However, because no evidence was introduced at trial regarding the defendant's opinion of or even knowledge about Rihanna, or about whether the defendant did or did not participate in a task force on police corruption, we question whether it is reasonable to ascribe to these items the meaning that the Commonwealth suggests, and to then infer that the defendant in fact created and intended to use the page to place the victim in imminent fear of bodily harm. Ultimately, based on the trial record, we conclude that the evidence of the defendant's intent concerning the creation of the Facebook profile was insufficient with respect both to whether the page constituted a threat within the scope of § 43 (a) (2), and to the reasonableness of the victim's fear.

SJC docket on the case, includes amicus briefs.