Commonwealth v. Johnson
Annotate this CaseThe two defendants in this case were both convicted of criminal harassment for posting information about the victims online along with false statements about items that the victims allegedly had for sale or were giving away solely for the purpose of encouraging unwitting third parties to repeatedly contact and harass the victims, and for sending hostile communications to the victims. On appeal, Defendants challenged the constitutionality of the criminal harassment statute, both facial and as applied to them. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding (1) the criminal harassment statute is neither unconstitutionally overbroad nor vague; (2) Defendants’ as-applied constitutional challenge failed because the conduct in question was not protected speech but, rather, a hybrid of conduct and speech integral to the commission of a crime; and (3) Defendants’ remaining claims similarly failed.
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