An “anonymous good Samaritan” has donated $US500,000 to the family of jailed League of Legends player Justin Carter in order to help them post bail, reports MSNBC. Carter, who was arrested for a Facebook comment in which he said he would “shoot up a kindergarten”, has been in jail for almost four months.
“Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head,” the 19-year-old Carter reportedly wrote after losing a match of League of Legends. “I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts.”
According to Carter’s father, those remarks were followed up by “lol” and “jk.”
Carter’s hearing is set for July 16. If convicted of the third-degree felony of making terrorist threats, he could be jailed for up to a decade.
Comments
33 responses to “Anonymous Person Posts $500,000 Bail For Jailed League Of Legends Player”
This makes me feel good!
I feel bad for the kid I honestly believe he was joking. very sad.
It’s VERY clear that he was joking, from the context of the discussion.
Nothing – NOTHING – should be taken out of context, especially when you’re planning on jailing someone for the prime of their life over it. It’s intellectually dishonest when the media does it, it should be criminal negligence when the judicial system does it, thanks to the damage caused.
Fun fact, the judge has been called upon by the board to explain himself for dramatically overreacting before, and had to reverse his decision: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/352679/justin-carters-judge-has-record-charles-c-w-cooke
What the actual fuck? How is this guy still in the job after that incident combined with this one? He’s a real douche. You might as well lock up half of all youtube users at this rate. There should be a special holiday on the anniversary of Justin’s arrest where everyone makes some kind of threat in jest. Something like “ugh, I’m sick of tax, I’m gonna blow up the whitehouse, lol jk”. If people don’t exercise their right to free speech it’ll eventually be lost.
I wish half the YouTubers would be locked in jail.
I’d hardly call joking about shooting up a kindergarten free speech.
Upvote for jailing youtubers, downvote for singularly failing to get the point. You really don’t get it.
As long as it’s joking and not threatening, it IS free speech. A threat is a crime, a joke is free speech.
Not the kind of speech that anyone actually approves of but the entire fucking point of free speech is that people are allowed to say things that others disapprove of, without going to jail for it.
That was the point. The entire time. What the fuck do you think free speech is FOR? For you to be free and safe from jail when you express patriotic desires and your love of One Direction and football and the national flag, and other things no-one was ever going to persecute you over?
Are you getting as tired of this argument as I am?
Surprisingly, not yet. Guess I’m a Believer/Zealot.
…I do actually want to see the judge brought up on charges or reprimanded/disbarred/otherwise punished in some way for not throwing this out immediately upon seeing the context. It’s very disturbing to me that we are edging towards acceptance of a Minority Report future.
Have you heard of any precedent cases where the state has been sued for being so negligent? This should never have gone past trial. Now that it has, this kid is definitely going to be scarred.
@phlaiman I doubt there’d be a precedent unless it was out of deliberate self-interest (usually financial – I know there’s a precedent for that, kids-for-cash juvenile courts in the US have a couple instances of judges over-sentencing in order to get kickbacks from prisons) rather than overreacting zealotry corrupting their interpretation of the law. That falls more under incompetence than malice.
Typically, even high-stakes professions insulate their employees at least a little against damage done due to mistakes. A bank clerk puts a zero in the wrong place, they don’t get hundreds of thousands of dollars taken out of their pay, though depending on the screwup they might get fired if it can’t be reversed. Where I work it’s pretty easy to make a mistake that might cost a department thousands, but correcting that would come out of department’s budget, not the individual employee’s wage.
Judges in particular, are held above all reasonable standards. Certainly in Australia, if you’ve ever had any dealings with JAG, you’ll know that they have their subordinates well-trained into believing that a senior lawyer, magistrate, or judge is basically GOD.
“Won’t be able to fix that for two weeks.”
“But… but… it’s for a judge!”
“Then your judge is going to have to make alternate arrangement during that time.”
They’re perfectly reasonable when you deal with them personally, it’s only their staff who think the heavens and earth should be moved for them, but they must do something to perpetuate that myth, and from hearing how they have to be treated in court and all the ceremony and ritual that goes with it, I’m pretty confident they approve of it.
Showing contempt for your garbageman isn’t a crime. Showing contempt for a judge (who IS ‘the court’) is. Which is around backwards, if you ask me. If all the garbos quit, we’d sure as hell notice it long before we noticed the judges quit. If garbos stopped working, we’d be up to our armpits in stinking refuse. If judges quit, there’d be criminals going free who shouldn’t be, or innocent men in jail. OHWAIT.
Just think. A decade from now he’ll come out of prison a hardened criminal.
And he’ll be about 1000x more likely to actually “shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts” then he is now.
This is exactly right. I can’t really understand why the justice system over there doesn’t recognise this? Why can’t people in powerful places understand this? Are they REALLY that dumb?
He’ll likely end up in a for profit prison. They’re incented to keep and obtain as many criminals as possible.
In all likelihood, the judge might own a piece of that prison and wanted to throw someone else in
So if he can post bail now, he’ll be able to spend 4 days with his family before he potentially gets locked up for 10 years. Better than nothing I guess.
Thinking they are just using the poor kid as an example of ‘catching terrorists’ from monitoring online social media. Except it was just a really nosy woman who blew the whistle and not some giant internet monitoring scheme.
I mean really, I’ve heard more severe trash talk than what he spouted. Hopefully this’ll get sorted soon.
It is ridiculous that we give words such power of us. By the utterance of words, I can destroy my own life.
im sorry, and i know im probably gonna get a bit of hate / flame for this, but i disagree
IMHO, the man should be jailed, he made a threat (whether or not he was serious or even followed up on it) he still made a thread and should be dealt with accordingly. If we let him off the hook for making death threats against children, (because he lost a game and lost his temper?) it doesn’t say much about our legal system
*edit*
as for the anon donating $500k, that has me stumped 😛
Is it a threat though if it is clearly said in jest? As other users have said, taking the words out of context is wrong.
I’ve said some pretty silly and disturbing stuff in my time, just to get a reaction from people, and my friends have said it back to me. If any of this was taken seriously i’d be in jail now. Imagine all the kids on xbox live that would be locked up for threatening to rape eachother?
If you think it was a legitimate threat, then you need to learn what sarcasm is.
i am well aware of what sarcasm is
If you dont understand the serious of a death threat against children, then maybe you should look into it…
*please note lack of sarcasm in this post*
I don’t blame you for this ridiculous opinion. I blame most of the media that are consistently leaving out the context of the comment.
its hardly a ridiculous option, its just a different way from what everyone else is looking at. Crimes are evolving with technology, so the actions he undertook are just as serious as him saying it aloud in public, its the internet… everyone hears
Yet not everyone is hearing the context of the comment.
I’ll reiterate, the context of the comment places the comment to be blatantly sarcastic. The context shows there is no actual threat. I don’t know how else to break this down for people.
It seems like every day Kotaku posts an article spreading further misinformation and I’m having to repeat myself constantly in hopes that readers don’t get the wrong idea.
“You are messed up in the head”
“Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts”.
This isn’t even an issue of free speech. This is an issue of a U.S. judge completely ignoring the context of what someone has said and deciding to interpret it into a threat when it obviously isn’t.
So I should probably be charged for sexual assault for teabagging in Modern warfare.
investigated… sure. Arrested over some emo teenager comment… hell NO.
Just another case of political frenzy targeting some1s freedom of speech (ya his comment was ****ed, welcome to the internet) instead of the real issues of mental health and violence in society Zzz.
I’m so hungry that I could eat a horse!* **
*lol j/k
**It’s called hyperbole.
I think Jail him, cuz it will be a good lesson to others who play league of legends and make threat. And I guess half of posters here dont have kids, to watch and protect. As a parent i would sew him anyway for threating my kids with death threats. So i guess this guy gets what he deserved
When you look up “Scapegoat” in the dictionary, this guy will be pictured there.
I hope he gets a real good lawyer, one that can tear that Hick Town courthouse apart.
while i’m happy the kid is out, i’m sickened that the government gets $500,000 out of jailing a kid who said something stupid on the internet.
If the kid turns up to court, the person will get their $500k back.
ahhh ok, thanks for explaining.
Full payments for bail are refundable so the government doesn’t see 500k and is dependent on the verdict and the bail agreement.
The kid isn’t out yet I believe since the article isn’t that informative, it takes time for that to happen.
Arguing on the internet, now not only pointless but potentially a jailable offence
I am very (genuinely) confused over this matter,
Yes I have read this article, the whole ‘original’ post and many different articles from varied sources and I am still confused as to why there is any question over this.
I find it hard to gain a ‘personal’ understanding of this person and why he would say such a thing because I don’t know him, I don’t know his history and I don’t know his future and frankly I don’t intend to.
Having a rough day does not justify (joking or not) the use of such a threat, don’t forget that this is an adult we are talking about, not a minor and such ‘announcements’ should be taken seriously.
Yes I know that this is an American issue and laws over there are a little different to Australia, but there have been hundreds of cases very similar to this where individuals post remarks like this online and have been convicted because they are very serious crimes. Just because he doesn’t follow through doesn’t mean he should be allowed to do it.
Yep, that’ll show ’em.
Next time you jail someone frivolously, we’ll send you another half a mil!
another news story about how insane the former land of the free are? run of the mill. some random posting $500k bail for him? ok, perhaps they’re not all beyond hope.
mega karmic kudos to that anon.
Kids needs to get his ass whooped for saying something like that
Even jokes have limits especially something very sensitive like this
u cannot just add jk and lol at the end and call it a joke.
Unfortunately he’s a victim of the degradation of freedom of speech where someone who is inclined to get offended by what someone says suddenly has legislative power over them because people’s feelings tend to be more important today rather than the ability to say anything without consequence.