The Supreme Court has ruled to make it more difficult to convict a person of making a violent threat.
The case could make it harder for prosecutors to convict certain people who threaten elected officials including the president.
The question for the court was whether prosecutors must show that a person being prosecuted for making a threat knew their behavior was threatening or whether prosecutors just have to prove that a reasonable person would see it as threatening.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote that prosecutors have to show that “the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.”
