Teen’s Poem Not a Threat, Justices Rule

Declaring that school safety and free speech are “not necessarily antagonistic goals,” the California Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously overturned the felony conviction of a high school student whose violence-laced poem had been deemed a criminal threat.

The ruling will clear the criminal record of a Santa Clara County teenager identified by the court as George “Julius” T., who as a 15-year-old sophomore was sentenced to 100 days in juvenile detention for giving classmates copies of a poem he had written that mentioned bringing guns to school.

The prosecution of the teenager attracted national attention, and several prominent writers, including Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, weighed in on behalf of the young poet.

In a decision written by Justice Carlos R. Moreno, the court ruled the boy’s poem did not amount to an unequivocal threat under the state’s criminal threat law.

“Following Columbine, Santee and other notorious school shootings, there is a heightened sensitivity on school campuses to latent signs that a student ... may embark on a shooting rampage,” Moreno wrote. “Ensuring a safe school environment and protecting freedom of expression, however, are not necessarily antagonistic goals.”

The decision permits schools to continue to discipline, even expel, students who are feared to be dangerous, but states that courts must stringently review criminal convictions that involve creative work.

Lawyers who sided with George said the ruling made clear that the artistic work of students deserves the same constitutional protection as the work of established authors and artists.

George was one of several students around the country arrested for stories, poetry or art that evoked violence following the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999. George was arrested in March 2001, less than two weeks after a boy his age killed two students and injured 13 others at a school in Santee, Calif.

On the Friday before his arrest, George approached a girl in his honors English class at Santa Teresa High School in San Jose and asked her if the school had a poetry club. He had been at the school two weeks.

He gave the girl a copy of a poem he had labeled “Dark Poetry” and titled “Faces.” He told her the poetry described him and his feelings. “Tell me if they describe you and your feelings,” he told her.

“Faces” began: “Who are these faces around me? Where did they come from?”

It ended with these lines: “For I am Dark, Destructive & Dangerous. I slap on my face of happiness but inside I am evil!! For I can be the next kid to bring guns to kill students at school. So parents watch your children cuz I’m BACK!!”

The girl became so scared she fled the campus. She e-mailed her English teacher about the poem the next day, and police went to George’s home on Sunday and arrested him. George also had given his poetry to another girl, who did not read it until Monday. She burst into tears when she read it, and said it terrified her.

Testifying in juvenile court, George said he never imagined the girls would take his poetry as a threat. He said he wrote “Faces” during his English class after having a particularly bad day. His parents had forgotten to give him money for lunch, and he had misplaced something he needed, he said.

He gave the poem to the girls the same day.

George had no history of violence and wrote his brooding poetry at a time when his family was broke and lived with an uncle, who had guns. The boy had been disciplined at a previous school for urinating on a wall and was asked to leave a second school for plagiarizing from the Internet.

He told the juvenile court that he wanted his poem to have a powerful ending that evoked danger. “I just wanted to ... kind of get you, like, like, whoa, that’s really something,” he said on the stand.

He was expelled from his school, and after serving his time in juvenile hall, attended another school while his case was on appeal.

In overturning his conviction, the state Supreme Court stressed that George wrote that he could be the next kid to bring guns to school, not that he would.

“While the protagonist in “Faces” declares that he has the potential or capacity to kill students given his dark and hidden feelings, he does not actually threaten to do so,” Moreno wrote for the court. “While perhaps discomforting and unsettling, in this unique context this disclosure simply does not constitute an actual threat to kill or inflict harm.”

A creative work can constitute a criminal threat, but courts must look at whether the work was really intended as a threat, he said.

In George’s case, there were no incriminating circumstances, Moreno said. “There was no history of animosity or conflict” between George and the classmates with whom he shared his work, and “no threatening gestures or mannerisms,” Moreno said.

Dark poetry is a relatively new genre of poetry that Coetzee and other authors told the court was an extension of the poetry of Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Robert Lowell and others. It generally depicts ugly or violent experiences.

“The themes and feelings expressed in ‘Faces’ are not unusual in literature,” Moreno wrote.

“The protagonist describes his duplicitous nature -- malevolent on the inside, felicitous on the outside.”

Still, the court said school officials were justified in taking action after learning of the poem.

Justice Marvin Baxter, in a separate concurring opinion, said authorities would have been remiss if they had not investigated and responded vigorously to the “menacing” poem.

“School and law enforcement officials had every reason to worry that defendant, deeply troubled, was contemplating his own campus killing spree,” Baxter wrote.

Michael A. Kresser, who represented George in the case, was out of the country Thursday and could not be reached for comment. In an interview in May, he said George was about to graduate from high school and hoped to enter the military. George had been worried that the military might not accept him because of his criminal conviction, Kresser said.

University of Santa Clara law professor Gerald Uelmen, who helped Kresser prepare for the state high court arguments, said the decision may deter prosecutors from taking such students to court.

“I think they will have second thoughts,” Uelmen said.

The ruling also will require appeals courts to conduct stringent reviews of any criminal conviction involving a creative work that is protected by the 1st Amendment, Uelmen said.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Jeffrey M. Laurence, who represented the prosecution in the case, said the court recognized that “schools need to be vigilant.” He said the ruling would force courts to determine case by case whether a creative work constituted a threat.

“The court is not carving out any special rules for poetry, lyrics or artwork, but they do recognize that those media may have some ambiguity,” Laurence said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which argued on behalf of George in the case, called the ruling “a resounding victory for students’ 1st Amendment rights of creative expression.”

“This case provides much-needed guidance to both school officials and law enforcement in responding in a sensible and measured way when confronted with student work that raises questions about safety,” said Ann Brick, staff attorney for the ACLU.

David Greene, an attorney for the First Amendment Project, also lauded the ruling, saying, “We hope that law enforcement will show as great an appreciation for the subtlety, complexity and legitimacy of artistic expression as was shown today by the California Supreme Court.”