A federal appeals court has reversed the conviction of a San Diego man after finding that menacing and racially defamatory statements he posted on an online message board did not amount to a “true threat” against Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign.
Walter Bagdasarian was convicted of threatening to kill and inflict bodily harm on a major presidential candidate after he posted two statements on Oct. 22, 2008, on an American International Group message board operated by Yahoo! Finance, according to the July 20 opinion by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. At the time of Bagdasarian’s posts, the federal government had just bailed out American International Group.
