# Watts v. United States

> Supreme Court of the United States · April 21, 1969 · 394 U.S. 705

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9424009

## Case

- **Full name:** Watts v. United States
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** April 21, 1969
- **Citations:** 394 U.S. 705; 89 S. Ct. 1399; 22 L. Ed. 2d 664; 1969 U.S. LEXIS 1871
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Fortas
- **Judges:** Douglas, Fortas, Stewart, White, Harlan
- **Cited by:** 838 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9424009

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding, with respect to a statute criminalizing threats against the President of the United States, that “a statute such as this one, which makes criminal a form of pure speech, must be interpreted with the commands of the First Amendment clearly in mind,” so that “a threat m…
- finding that the statute in question in that case must be interpreted “against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debates on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and some…
- holding utterance that “[i]f they ever make me carry a rifle [upon being drafted into the U.S. military] the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.” was merely “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President” and was thus prote…
- holding that a man who, in protesting the draft, stated, “ ‘If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.,’ ” did not make a true *812 threat (quoting N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270, 84 S. Ct. 710, 11 L. Ed. 2d 686 (1964))
- holding that defendant could not be convicted of criminal threats against president where statements at political rally implying that defendant might shoot president, understood in context, amounted to “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition”

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Fortas,
with whom Mr. Justice Harlan joins,
dissenting.
The Court holds, without hearing, that this statute is constitutional and that it is here wrongly applied. Neither of these rulings should be made without hearing, even if we assume that they are correct.
Perhaps this is a trivial case because of its peculiar facts and because the petitioner was merely given a suspended sentence. That does not justify the Court’s action. It should induce us to deny certiorari, not to decide the case on its merits and to adjudicate the difficult questions that it presents.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9424009. Public record. Not legal advice.