"True Threats" After Taylor

Near the end of last year, the North Carolina Supreme Court decided State v. Taylor, 2021-NCSC-164, 866 S.E.2d 740 (2021), and we summarized the opinion here. This post considers the potential impact of Taylor on other offenses involving threatening speech, and addresses a couple lingering questions that may arise in future cases. Recap and Holdings Taken together, the opinions, concurrences, and dissents issued by the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court in this case span nearly two hundred pages. A healthy portion of both opinions was devoted to reviewing U.S. Supreme Court precedent interpreting the First Amendment in relation to anti-threat statutes. Without attempting to repeat all of that analysis here, both opinions concluded that bedrock principles of free speech obligate the courts to ensure that only "true threats" are prohibited under such laws. Applying those principles to the key question of whether the defendant's allegedly threatening statements in Taylor were a "true threat," the state Supreme Court's holding was pretty straightforward: "we define a true threat as an objectively threatening statement communicated by a party which possesses the subjective intent to threaten a listener or identifiable group." Id., 866 S.E.2d at 753. Under that definition, "we determine that the State is required to prove both an objective and a subjective element in order to convict defendant under N.C.G.S. § 14-16.7(a)." Id. at 755. Therefore, the higher court's task on review was to determine whether the lower appellate court "erred in concluding that the State presented insufficient evidence to meet its [...]