Manifesto Mailed at Kickoff

Glendale, Arizona, Super Bowl Sunday, 3 February 2008. Five days earlier Kurt Havelock had bought an AR-15, five spare magazines and ammunition and studied a map of the car parks around the University of Phoenix Stadium. About thirty minutes before kickoff he drove, rifle in the car, to a post office near the stadium and mailed six Priority Mail envelopes to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Phoenix New Times, the Associated Press and two music websites. Each held a 'media packet': a six-page 'econopolitical' manifesto titled 'Karma Leveller: Bad Thoughts on a Beautiful Day', full of violent, forward-looking language, and a letter apologising to police and directing them to his car near the stadium. He then drove to a car park by the stadium intending, in his words, to wait for an opportunity to shoot people and die by 'suicide by cops'. Minutes later he had a change of heart, rang his fiancee, told his parents he had done something terribly wrong, and drove to Tempe police station to hand over the rifle and copies of the packets. Nobody was hurt. He was indicted under 18 U.S.C. 876(c) for mailing threats to injure 'the person of another', one count per envelope. He argued the packets were addressed to corporations, not persons; that they were a post-mortem explanation, not a threat; that the manifesto was political speech; and that there was no proof he meant to threaten anyone.