Christine Wright-Darrisaw was found guilty of threatening the President under 18 U.S. Code Section 871(a). Ms. Wright-Darrisaw experienced a negative result in her local Family Court. She called the White House switchboard and, after two and one-half minutes of incoherent barnyard gibbersih, threatened to fornicate and kill President Obama. She was entitled to a four point reduction in her offense level under Guidelines Section 2A6.1(b)(6) if the sentencing court found that "the offense involved a single instance evidencing little or no deliberation." The trial judge refused to grant the reduction, noting that the very act of contacting the White House involved deliberation. According to the Second Circuit, "the explanation provided by the district court suggests that the court may have been too sweeping in its consideration of what constitutes deliberation cognizable under U.S.S.G. § 2A6.1(b)(6)." The "deliberation" to be considered under 2A6.1(b)6) "is deliberation related to the communication of the threat itself. Only if a defendant's course of conduct leading up to and following the time the threat was made is closely tied to the communication of the threat, or if the defendant makes any effort to carry out the threat, may the conduct then provide a basis for inferring deliberation sufficient to reject the four-level reduction." Although the call here was deliberate, the threat may not have been. Since it appears that the district court conflated the two concepts, the Second Circuit remanded for re-analysis of the deliberation issue. Examining holdings in sister circuits, the Second Circuit focused on two critical factors in determining whether deliberation is present: "(1) whether, and under what circumstances, the threat itself has been repeated and (2) whether there is evidence of planning or some effort to carry out the threat." In Wright-Darrisaw's case, it is undisputed that the threat against President Obama was not repeated. (However, there were abundant past threats against neighbors, strangers, President Bush, and other officials.) Thus, the only question on remand is whether "there is sufficient evidence of planning or some effort to carry out the threat." The case is  United States v. Wright-Darrisaw.

 Wright-Darrisaw's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence against her was deferred pending the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Elonis, 730 F.3d 321 (3d. Cir. 2013), cert. granted, 134 S.Ct. 2819 (2014).

(wisenberg)