A 62-year-old Tacoma man arrested by Seattle Police last Thursday for making electronic threats against Mayor Ed Murray has been released from jail.
Meanwhile, the King County Prosecutor’s Office is sorting through a series of emails the man sent to the Murray in order to distinguish between true threats of harm and offensive speech protected under the First Amendment, according to Dan Donohoe with the prosecutor’s office.
Seattle Police reported in an SPD Blotter post that the department had consulted with the prosecutor’s office prior to the March 30 arrest.
“We will not be rush filing threats charges against the suspect who was arrested based on a series of emails he sent to the office of the Mayor of Seattle,” Donohoe wrote in an email response to sister paper the Capitol Hill Times. “We will spend the time necessary to analyze the content of the emails to distinguish between any actual true threats of harm and offensive speech protected by the First Amendment."