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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1012 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 20, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Court opinion:

  • During a telephone call, a prisoner's romantic partner asks him whether he is gay. The prisoner becomes angry and ends the call. On the next day, he writes a two-page email explaining that he is not gay, he hates homosexual people, and if he had been at home he would have shot her for insulting him so badly.
  • The prison reads the email, blocks it from being sent, charges the prisoner with the offense of threatening another person with bodily harm, convicts him of that offense, and imposes punishment of 90 days of solitary confinement, 60 days of lost good-behavior credit, and 15 days of lost recreational privileges.
  • The appeals panel reverses. The prisoner's objective in writing this email obviously was to convince his romantic partner that he was not homosexual, not to threaten her or anybody else with bodily harm. Therefore, the conviction was arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.

Doesn't exactly look like "fun thread" material but...

The rules for inmates are very different (and stricter) than rules for people on the outside.

"I'd shoot you for saying that to my face" is something extremely unlikely to result in prosecution under normal circumstances.

But inmates (and parolees) can definitely be charged/revoked for stuff like that. They get no slack, and (imo) rightly so. If you're already in lockup, sending your girlfriend an email threatening violence (even if you were being hyperbolic) is something you should know better than to do, and if you don't, you probably should stay in lockup.

Doesn't exactly look like "fun thread" material

You are supposed to laugh at (1) the prisoner's writing two pages of "no homo" and (2) the appeals panel's being forced to defend the prisoner's right to send "repeated[] express[ions] of hatred of individuals belonging to the LGBTQ+ community" that it finds "vulgar, reprehensible, and distressing".

"I would've shot you for that" is definitely not a threat, but I guess I'm ok locking that sort of person up regardless if it was serious.

Amazing. Perfect Friday Fodder.

Methinks bro doth protest too much.

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