Law.com relates the story of what appears to me to be an unjust conviction.
A man at a homeless shelter began to have a psychotic episode, "exhibiting bizarre psychotic behavior as he repetitively rocked and chanted the words to himself" and spoke into his walkman. As staff members approached him he then became "increasingly agitated and animated, until he was screaming and yelling at the top of his lungs that he hated white people and wanted to cut their heads off." Such behavior got him kicked out of the shelter and involuntarily committed, but that's not the problem. The problem was that as soon as he was released from the psychiatric hospital the Secret Service arrested him for making death threats against the family of a former president. It seems that during his psychotic episode he kept saying, "I'm gonna put two bullets into her, gonna put two bullets into Hillary Clinton."
The judge, U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in a jury-less trial, convicted him. "We are satisfied that the statements made by defendant that he was going to shoot Senator Clinton were true threats," Surrick wrote.
Surrick based his verdict on the fact that these were the words that were spoken, and that people in the shelter clearly were concerned he might be a danger. Notice that they kicked him out, the judge wrote. "They did not want to allow someone who was talking about shooting Hillary Clinton and killing white people to remain at the shelter overnight. They were afraid that he might lose control."
But that does not mean that they thought that he had the specific intent to kill Clinton. It just means they thought he might lose control and be a danger to people in the shelter. Which seems reasonable, given the irrationality of his outbursts.
But because the literal form of those outbursts focused on a family member of a former president, the judge conflated them with the general concern for his behavior and found him guilty of the crime charged. The law required only that the government prove that "a reasonable person would foresee that the statement would be interpreted by those to whom the maker communicates the statement as a serious expression of an intention to inflict bodily harm."
The evidence does not show that the staff thought he had a specific intent to cause bodily harm to anyone, however, much less Clinton. The evidence simply shows that the staff found him to be a man out of control, and thus a general danger as someone behaving irrationally. It was therefore wrong for the judge to substitute the general fear of his psychosis as a measure of his specific intent to cause harm. If he had been in enough control of his faculties to be able to form intent, he also would have been in enough control not to have had the outburst in the first place and get himself kicked out of the shelter. Because he lacked the control for the latter, it should be impossible as a matter of law to find the former.
(The article indicates that Assistant Federal Defender Elizabeth T. Hey made this argument, which the judge then rebuffed. I hope she's able to appeal.)