Civil Liberties

Texas Teen Has Been in Jail for Months Over Bad-Taste Facebook Joke Taken for "Threat"

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This particular idiocy just came to my attention today, via a KHOU.com Houston report from earlier this week:

Justin Carter was 18 back in February when an online video game "League of Legends" took an ugly turn on Facebook. 

Jack Carter says his son Justin and a friend got into an argument with someone on Facebook about the game and the teenager wrote a comment he now regrets. 

"Someone had said something to the effect of 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,' to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,' and the next two lines were lol and jk.," said Carter. 

"LOL" stands for "laughing out loud," and "jk" means "just kidding," but police didn't think it was funny. Neither did a woman from Canada who saw the posting. 

Justin's dad says the woman did a Google search and found his son's old address was near an elementary school and she called police. 

Justin Carter was arrested the next month and has been jailed since March 27. He's charged with making a terroristic threat and is facing eight years in prison, according to his dad. 

Daily Caller reports police reaction:

Authorities noted that recent school shootings like the one in Newtown, Connecticut have caused them to evaluate all potential threats seriously. Newtown was still fresh in their minds at the time of Carter's arrest.

"In light of recent situations, statements such as the one Justin made are taken seriously," said an Austin police detective in a statement.

Reason on a case earlier this month–one where grand jury ultimately failed to indict–of a kid's Facebook writings getting him arrested, in this case "violent" rap lyrics.