Justin Carter: Jailed For FB Comment

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You absolutely should IMO. The difference between yelling "fire!" in a theater and joking about murder is that in the former example the joke is both experienced involuntarily and is not immediately perceived as a joke. If you go to see a stand-up comedian with an extreme sense of humor however you are well within your rights to simply leave and you need not be exposed to it any more than you wish. Plus, the context makes it abundantly obvious that whatever the comedian says is a joke and should be taken as such. The distinction is made between whether it is a joke at somebody else's expense (or without the other person realizing it's a joke and especially if it results in distress or physical harm to the person hearing it) or simply a comment intended to evoke laughter. Somebody being offended by a joke however is not grounds enough for the freedom of speech to be abridged, even if it is in incredibly poor taste.

EDIT: Also, if you go up to someone and tell them you are going to set a school bus on fire or whatever at some point that stops being a joke and becomes a potential confession. Saying something like that for ironic effect to someone who is guaranteed to understand the joke should be perfectly acceptable (and in theory is). If it's not followed by a confirmation that it was in fact only a joke then I think there is cause for alarm if the joke was made ambiguously. The kid in question not only said he was joking but he structured his "joke" in such a way that it would be construed by fluent English speakers as sarcasm.

I didn't necessarily intend to imply while on the job (although, a comedian, while on stage, making a joke, "I'm going to go kill someone," leaves, and a minute later comes back saying, "Just kidding!" may fall along the lines of screaming "fire!" in a theater). Nevertheless, there was no information provided by the family on whether or not the "which was followed by saying JK (just kidding) and LOL (laughing out loud)" happened at a later time, after the original posting (i.e. enough time that would allow for confusion). "Followed by" tells me that the kid responded to his own comment twice, and did not simply post it all in one comment. I'm not going to go out of my way to find these facebook comments, but if we're going to be talking about context, the time stamp of these comments would be crucial. If the time stamp were to show a significant amount of time had passed between comments, would you still claim he should not go to jail?

IMO, "IMO" has no significant effect on what i say.