The court of appeals reversed a judgment of the district court. The court held that a racist online prediction of bodily harm to and exhortation to “shoot” then-presidential candidate Barack Obama were protected First Amendment speech not constituting criminal threats under 18 U.S.C. §879(a)(3), which makes it a felony to threaten to kill or do bodily harm to a major presidential candidate.
In October 2008, shortly before the 2009 presidential election, Walter Bagdasarian posted the following statements on a Yahoo! Internet message board: “RE Obama fk the niggar, he will have a 50 cal in the head soon,” and “shoot the nig country fkd for another 4 years+, what nig has done ANYTHING right???? Long term???? Never in history except sambos.” He later posted statements on the same message board indicating that he had been extremely intoxicated at the time that he made the two earlier statements.
