Death Threat

A death threat is a threat, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or group of people. These threats are often designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behavior, and thus a death threat can be a form of coercion. For example, a death threat could be used to dissuade a public figure from pursuing a criminal investigation or an advocacy campaign.

In most jurisdictions, death threats are a serious type of criminal offense. Death threats are often covered by coercion statutes. For instance, the coercion statute in Alaska says:

A person commits the crime of coercion if the person compels another to engage in conduct from which there is a legal right to abstain or abstain from conduct in which there is a legal right to engage, by means of instilling in the person who is compelled a fear that, if the demand is not complied with, the person who makes the demand or another may inflict physical injury on anyone....

A death threat can be communicated via a wide range of media, among these letters, newspaper publications, telephone calls, internet blogs, and e-mail. If the threat is made against a political figure, it can also be considered treason. If a threat is against a non-living location that frequently contains living individuals (e.g. a building), it could be a terrorist threat. Sometimes, death threats are part of a wider campaign of abuse targeting a person or a group of people (see terrorism, mass murder).

Here is an example of an actual death threat, from the book Wordcrime by John Olsson. This is a genuine example from a criminal case, provided by the Forensic Linguistics Institute, which analyzes all kinds of text, including traditional letters, ransoms, hate mail, various texts via mobile phones; SMS devices, etc., for authorship:

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