Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1969

Watts v. United States

394 U.S. 705 | 89 S. Ct. 1399 | 22 L. Ed. 2d 664 | 1969 U.S. LEXIS 1871

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Takeaway

In short, Watts holds that even a statute validly protecting the President from genuine threats cannot be used to punish contextually conditional, audience-recognized political hyperbole.

Background

At an August 1966 public rally on the Washington Monument grounds, Robert Watts, then 18 years old, joined a discussion about police brutality. After others urged young people to get an education, Watts said that he had been classified 1-A and was due for a draft physical. He stated that he would not go and added: “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.” He also said that he would not kill his “black brothers.” The audience laughed after the remark.

A federal jury convicted Watts under 18 U.S.C. § 871, which criminalizes knowingly and willfully making a threat to kill or inflict bodily harm on the President. The District of Columbia Circuit affirmed by a divided vote. The Supreme Court granted certiorari, reversed, and directed entry of a judgment of acquittal.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether 18 U.S.C. § 871, which criminalizes knowing and willful threats against the President, is facially constitutional.

Holding

Yes. The statute is constitutional on its face, but it must be applied consistently with the First Amendment.

Reasoning

The Court recognized the Nation’s exceptionally strong interest in protecting the President’s physical safety and allowing the Chief Executive to perform official duties without interference from threats of violence. That interest permits Congress to criminalize genuine threats against the President.

But the statute regulates a form of pure speech. The Court therefore construed the word “threat” against the First Amendment’s commitment to uninhibited, robust, and wide-open debate on public issues, including vehement and sharply critical attacks on public officials. The statute may reach true threats, not speech that the Constitution protects.

Issue #2

Whether Watts’s conditional statement about putting President Johnson “in [his] sights” was a true threat under § 871 rather than protected political hyperbole.

Holding

No. In context, Watts’s statement was political hyperbole, not a true threat, and his conviction could not stand.

Reasoning

The Court emphasized that Watts made the remark during a political discussion at a public rally. His words were a crude expression of opposition to the Vietnam-era draft and to a President whom he regarded as responsible for forcing him to fight, rather than a serious communication of an intention to harm the President.

The statement was expressly conditional: Watts said what he would do only “if” he were made to carry a rifle. Yet he had just said that he would refuse induction. That condition made the asserted prospect of violence contingent on an event that he vowed would not occur.

The reaction of the listeners reinforced the political and rhetorical character of the remark. Both Watts and the crowd laughed afterward, supporting the conclusion that his audience would understand the statement as crude, offensive political rhetoric rather than a serious threat of assassination.

Issue #3

Whether § 871’s requirement that a threat be made “knowingly and willfully” requires proof that the speaker intended to carry out the threatened violence.

Holding

The Court did not decide that question because the Government had failed at the threshold to prove that Watts made a true threat at all.

Reasoning

The Court noted disagreement in the lower court over the meaning of “willfully.” Earlier cases had treated the requirement as satisfied when the defendant voluntarily spoke the words with an apparent determination to execute them, while the dissent below had urged a more demanding understanding. The Court expressed grave doubts about the earlier formulation but did not resolve the statutory issue.

Whatever “willfully” ultimately requires, the Government must first establish that the words amount to a true threat. Because Watts’s statement was protected political hyperbole in its full context, no interpretation of the willfulness element could sustain his conviction.

Concurrences

Justice Douglas

Reasoning

Justice Douglas agreed that Watts’s conviction should be reversed, but he placed the case in a broader historical account of laws used to punish hostile speech about rulers and political leaders. He traced the statute’s ancestry to English constructive-treason prosecutions, in which words or even alleged thoughts were treated as proof of disloyal designs against the King.

He also recalled speech prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition Acts and prior expansive applications of the statute protecting the President. In his view, these examples showed the recurring danger that government will treat harsh criticism as a threat to public order or national loyalty.

Douglas’s central concern was that suppressing speech is an old police device incompatible with the Constitution. His concurrence thus underscored the need to prevent § 871 from becoming a vehicle for punishing political dissent merely because it is bitter, vulgar, or alarming.

Dissents

Justice Fortas

Reasoning

Justice Fortas, joined by Justice Harlan, objected primarily to the Court’s procedure rather than offering a contrary substantive interpretation of Watts’s words. He believed the Court should not, without oral argument, both uphold the statute’s facial constitutionality and decide that the statute had been improperly applied on these facts.

In his view, the case’s seemingly minor character and Watts’s suspended sentence did not justify a summary merits ruling on difficult constitutional and statutory questions. Those circumstances instead supported denying certiorari and leaving the lower-court judgment undisturbed.

Justice White

Reasoning

Justice White recorded a dissent without a written opinion. The Court’s report therefore provides no separate reasoning or legal theory for his disagreement with the reversal.

Justice Stewart

Reasoning

Justice Stewart stated that he would deny the petition for certiorari. He gave no further explanation, but his position was that the Court should not grant review and reach the merits of Watts’s conviction.