Teen Poet Gets Day In Court
On May 27, the teenager who was convicted of making a criminal threat by sharing his poetry will have his day in the California Supreme Court.
The CBLDF joined the First Amendment Project and prominent authors including Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, Nobel Laureate J.M. Coatzee, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, Greg Rucka, Harlan Ellison and others in filing an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of California urging the court to overturn the conviction of George Julius T. George T. was a high school student in San Jose, California who was convicted under California’s threat law after showing “Faces,” a poem he labeled as “dark poetry,” to two of his classmates. The student served 90 days in Juvenile Hall and was expelled from Santa Maria High School.
The brief argues that the court should reverse the student’s conviction on the grounds that the poem at issue is presumptively entitled to the highest level of First Amendment protection; that in order to determine whether this otherwise presumptively protected work of poetry is a true threat, the court must engage in an independent review of the record; and that the poem at issue is not a true threat, considering that both the trial and appeals court improperly shifted the burden to defendant to prove that, under the circumstances of its communication, “Faces” is not a true threat, and that the circumstances under which the poem was communicated do not convincingly demonstrate a serious expression of an intent to inflict harm on others.
Oral arguments are expected to run for an hour. The First Amendment Project is organizing a reading that will take place in San Francisco the night before the oral argument. The reading will feature violent passages from acclaimed literature to emphasize the important role that violence plays in our literary heritage. The reading will take place Wednesday May 26 from 6-8 PM at Bruno's at Mission at 20th St. in San Francisco.
The full text of the brief is available as a PDF file at The First Amendment Center
