Miami man charged over Twitter threat to Mitch McConnell. Experts call it protected speech.
A Miami medical student is facing jail time after cops arrested him for a graphic, violent tweet aimed at U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell — an arrest his attorney and legal experts immediately decried as running afoul of the First Amendment.
The student, Steven DiLauro, 31, posted bond Friday on a state felony charge of issuing a written threat to kill or do bodily harm.
“I’m bewildered they chose to make an arrest for someone venting when there is much worse stuff on the Internet,” said Brett Schwartz, adding: “Statutorily, it doesn’t pass muster.”
DiLauro, of Pinecrest, was arrested Thursday night as votes were still being counted in the heated showdown between former Vice President Joseph Biden and President Donald Trump — the world’s most famous tweeter. McConnell, R-Kentucky, would remain the powerful majority leader if Republicans retain control of the U.S. Senate.
According to a Miami-Dade Police arrest report, DiLauro wrote on Oct. 26 that if he ever saw McConnell, he would “bounce his skull on the sidewalk like a f**king sea otter and tear his skin off while he’s still breathing and that’s a promise.”
He also wrote that “every member of the GOP should be lined up in a front of a wall but there are a select few who should be slowly lowered into a tank of sharks,” the report said.
When visited by a Miami-Dade police detective on Thursday, DiLauro admitted he “posted the comments out of anger,” according to the police report. The report did not indicate where DiLauro attended school.
Twitter, of course, is a cesspool of fiery political speech from members of both parties, Russian bots fomenting discord and politicians themselves. Trump has been criticized for posting tweets that critics say incite violence. Trump infamously wrote “when the looting starts the shooting starts” about civil unrest following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.
Legal experts say the First Amendment protects rhetorical hyperbole — or colorful commentary that no one would reasonably believe to be real. And the line is even blurrier when a prominent public official is involved, and the tweets are made during the course of a divisive, hotly contested election on a platform notorious for over-the-top commentary.
Bob Jarvis, a Nova Southeastern constitutional law professor, said it was “very troubling” that police arrested DiLauro. He said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a threat has to be a “true threat.”
“His comments are so outlandish on their face that nobody would take them seriously,” said Jarvis, who is not involved in the case. “What DiLauro was talking about was so weird. He was talking about sharks, and there’s nothing about that threat that makes you think he could actually carry it out. This is the kind of very overheated rhetoric that we’ve been hearing for years during the Trump presidency.”
While Miami-Dade police officers arrested DiLauro, who posted bond on Friday, the State Attorney’s office ultimately must decide whether to press charges.
Miami lawyer Brian Toth, a First Amendment expert, said he believes a conviction would be “implausible.”
“Context and circumstances matter — especially in politics,” said Toth, who is also not involved in the case. “Here the state would have to show beyond a reasonable doubt that DiLauro’s tweet was a serious expression of intent to inflict bodily harm on the senate majority leader. I doubt a jury would buy it.”
This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 3:35 PM.