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The Challenges Of Holding Someone Accountable For Inciting Violence Against Another

While the Internet, and social media in particular, is an excellent medium for discussing ideas and meeting like-minded people, it's also become a place where people indulge in their darker impulses and harass others online. It's not unusual for the bedevilment to turn into threats of and incitements to violence against targeted individuals. According to the PEW Research Center, 8% of people harassed online experienced physical threats. Although your loved one may have been fatally harmed because another person harassed or incited violence against him or her, proving that in court may be challenging. Here's more information about this problem.

The Elements of Incitement to Violence

Incitement to violence is generally defined as provoking, rousing, or goading a person or group of people to take violent action against others. Possibly the most recognized example of this is when one child urges another to hit a third child for some real or imagined slight. If the second child follows through on the urging, the first child would be guilty of inciting him or her to violence.

In the world of adults and courtrooms, there are three elements that must be proven for a charge of incitement to violence to stick:

• The perpetrator engaged in conduct encouraging others to commit violent acts
• There is a clear and imminent danger the incited person(s) will commit the act
• The incited person(s) commits the violent act, and the perpetrator's incitement is the proximal cause

For example, in the case of Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists, the Ninth Circuit court sided with four health care provider and two health clinics who had sued an anti-abortion organization for provocative conduct that led to deaths of three doctors. The group had posted "Wanted"-style pictures with personal details of medical staff who worked at the reproductive health clinics on a website.

Although the court found the group did not issue literal threats against the plaintiffs in the case, the way the posters were designed, coupled with the group's knowledge the images would make doctors fear for their lives, led the court to conclude there was enough of an implied threat to meet the incitement to violence standard.

Court Challenges

Unfortunately, the threat is not always clearly evident, and there are a couple of things that can prevent a plaintiff from proving his or her case and winning compensation for damages. One issue is that it's not always apparent the person is actually inciting or provoking others to act violently. This is particularly true when it comes to online communication where the absence of facial and body language can make it difficult to accurately interpret the intent behind words.

When a person writes "Someone should stab you in an alley" on a social media website, it can be hard to determine if the individual intends to incite someone to act or is simply trying to intimidate the victim. Depending on the context of the interaction between the writer and the victim, the writer may be able to successfully argue he or she only meant to scare the victim rather than actually seeking to bring real harm to the person.

Another issue is there has to be evidence that someone would and did follow through with the physical attack based on the instigator's provocation. In the Planned Parenthood example, it was somewhat easy to prove the threat to the doctors' lives was credible since the anti-abortion organization's actions had already led to the deaths of three other doctors. In online spaces, it may not always be evident that the group the individual is speaking to is susceptible to being provoked to violence, especially if the person engaged in similar behavior in the past and nothing occurred.

For more information about building a viable case against someone who harassed and incited violence against your loved one, contact an experienced attorney with skills in personal injury and perhaps wrongful death claims.