Violence |

In recommending legal remedies, you may note that I said a blogger has the building blocks of a case if they receive a bothersome threat. I felt reluctant to say that bloggers have absolute awesome odds of winning every legal case ever because each legal provision has its elements. If those elements are not satisfied, then the chances of prevailing in court (or even getting to court) are slim.

Let's take the provisions of cyberstalking as an example. To successfully bring a cyberstalking suit, the following must be proven:

(1) the defendant intentionally used the mail or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce;

(2) the defendant engaged in a course of conduct with the intent to place the victim in reasonable fear of death of, or serious bodily injury to, herself, her spouse or intimate partner, or a member of her immediate family; and

(3) the defendant’s course of conduct actually placed the victim in reasonable fear of death of, or serious bodily injury to, herself.

Now, if I'm learning my lawyering skills properly, it's our job to make sure we can prove every single facet of those elements true for the satisfaction of the court. We have to break down each element into its component parts and work on resolving the issues. So, for the first element, there are three things that we must find to satisfy it -- that the defendant in the case did the alleged behavior, that the behavior committed was intentionally done, and that the method used for doing it was "mail or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce." If it can be established that someone else used the defendant's computer to send the threatening message, there'd be a problem. If it could be established somehow that the defendant did not intend to use the device on which they sent the offending message, there'd be a problem. (And trust me, there are legal requirements for intent that sometimes defy common sense, and a good defense lawyer bills you highly to find them and to use them.) If the offending message was somehow not sent on the methods listed, there'd be a problem. So lawyers comb through each element, looking through little loopholes like those to worm through victories for clients on either side of the "v." in a case. It is not easy, and television makes it look easy, though the courtroom speeches and magical eloquence of actors inspire quite a few litigators, I'm sure.