Terroristic threat

A terroristic threat is a threat to commit a crime of violence or a threat to cause bodily injury to another person and terrorization as the result of the proscribed conduct. Several U.S. states have enacted statutes which impose criminal liability for "terroristic threatening" or "making a terroristic threat."

Generally, a terroristic threat "is sufficiently specific where it threatens death or great bodily injury, and a threat is not insufficient simply because it does not communicate a time or precise manner of execution. Thus, a criminal statute prohibiting terroristic threatening serves to criminalize future, as well as present, death threats."

The courts have held that "a threat need not take any particular form or be expressed in any particular words, and may be made by innuendo or suggestion, and that the words uttered will not be considered in a vacuum but rather in light of all the circumstances." A number of courts have upheld convictions under a state criminal terroristic threat statute on the basis of a single or solitary threat, a conditional threat, or a threat that some third person will take action. In several states, courts have held that a "threatener's present inability to carry out his or her threats does not in itself remove the threats from the purview of terroristic threat or terroristic threatening statutes." However, "the courts recognized that one does not violate a terroristic threat or terroristic threatening statute by making idle talk or jests which do not have a reasonable tendency to create apprehension that the speaker will act according to the threat."

The threat need not be communicated in person, but may be made by any means; courts have in a number of cases held that a terroristic threat statute may be violated by a threat may by telephone, by letter by communication with a third party, or by "a nonverbal, symbolic threat which in other respects satisfies the criminal elements specified in the terroristic threat statute" (such as the burning of a cross on the target's driveway).

The required mens rea element of the offense is generally "that the accused have made the threat with the intent or purpose of causing fear in the victim or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such fear." At least one court has specified that the "proof of a terroristic threat is measured by an objective standard."

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