Assassination Threat to Barack Obama
Maine Man Arrested for Death Threat “Joke” in Miami, Florida
Aug 8, 2008
Amid a large cache of guns, armor piercing bullets, machetes, body armor, paramilitary clothing, stun guns, tear gas canisters, batons and numerous knives, Miami federal magistrate Judge Stephen T. Brown ordered 22 year old Raymond Hunter Geisel jailed without bail yesterday, August 7th. Raymond said he was “joking," so was a crime committed?
Secret Service Special Agent Paul Adie swore in Criminal Complaint #08-3023-STB for the Southern District of Florida that Geisel threatened to, "kill, kidnap and inflict bodily harm upon a major candidate for the office of President of the United States, that is, Senator Barack Obama, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 879." Reporter Tom Brown of Reuters News Service quoted Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan on Thursday evening as saying this, "might be the first arrest" in connection with the current presidential campaign.
Raymond Geisel
Geisel is not an unknown! As Curt Anderson of the AP and Bangor Daily News reporter Nok-Noi Ricker quoted Sgt. Scott Webber of the Hampden Maine Police Department on Thursday evening, "We’ve dealt with him multiple times over the years….Every agency in the general area has dealt with him for one thing or another.”
According to Ricker’s article, “Geisel is originally from Winterport;” 12 miles south of Bangor on the Penobscot River. His mother, Linda Geisel had numerous differences with Maine school officials and in 1997, “asked that past and future medical bills for both boys, specifically psychological exams, be paid for by the district,” according to Ricker. The Miami affidavit claims Geisel told agent Adie that he had “mental health problems” and “suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.” Sgt Webber said Hampton police, "arrested him on a warrant in 2005… [and in] ’07 we charged him with threatening his brother with a knife."
The Threat
In the Reuters article Brown continued that an unidentified female witness told investigators that Geisel had said if, "That n----r, if he gets elected, I'll assassinate him myself." The criminal complaint signed by agent Adie states, “Geisel did state, however, that if he wanted to kill Senator Obama he simply would shoot him with a sniper rifle….” And CNN correspondent Susan Candiotti reported on Thursday that Judge Brown “…ordered that Geisel be held in jail until his trial, calling him a danger to the community and a risk to run away before his date in court.”
The Crime
- Owning guns, even armor piercing bullets, is not a crime in Florida. Agent Adie said in the criminal complaint, “Geisel also claimed that possession of all of the items was legal....It was later confirmed that it is legal to possess armor piercing rounds in Florida.”
- Also to threaten a candidate or President is not a crime. Title 18, USC, Section 879 says, “…circumstances would bear upon the proof of both subjective intent and objective perceptions. For example, if a person were serving a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and therefore objectively could not be perceived as presently able to effect a threat to kill a protectee…this circumstance should bear upon whether a communication by the person would be considered as ‘knowingly and willfully’ made.” H.R. Rep. #725, 97th Cong., 2d Sess. 4 1982
- Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition defines intent as, “The mental purpose to accomplish a specific act prohibited by law.” Geisel’s admission of “mental health problems,” his previous criminal history, cache of weapons and multiple statements of assassination gave the secret service, “evidence that the maker intended the statement to be a threat” as required in the Act. This is sufficient for Geisel to be arrested; however, a jury will determine whether a crime was committed and if he is guilty of it.
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