United States v. Dutcher

On June 30, 2015, Dutcher announced on Facebook that he planned to assassinate President Obama. He then drove to La Crosse, Wisconsin, where the President was scheduled to speak on July 2. Once in La Crosse, Dutcher repeated his plan to a security guard, the police, the Secret Service, a nurse, a doctor, and the Secret Service together. Dutcher was convicted of two counts of threatening the President, 18 U.S.C. 871(a) and sentenced to 36 months’ imprisonment. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence and to jury instructionsthat it could find willfulness if the government proved Dutcher “either actually intended his statement to be a true threat, or that he knew that other people reasonably would view his statement as a true threat but he made the statement anyway.” View "United States v. Dutcher" on Justia Law