The arrest of a Lakeland woman on a charge of threatening a Blue Cross Blue Shield Florida insurance worker has made national and international news and has raised questions about free speech, but two area experts say the charge is warranted.
Supporters have rallied around the 42-year-old mother of three, contributing more than $62,500 to a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for legal fees.
The background: On Dec. 10, Briana Boston was discussing her medical coverage with a BCBS worker, who apparently informed her that her claim had been turned down. The arrest affidavit said, “Near the end of the call, Boston stated in sum and substance, ‘Delay, deny, depose. You people are next.’”
Two of those three words – “Delay, Deny” – were etched on bullet shell casings found at the scene of the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City on Dec. 4. The words are an apparent reference to tactics used by insurance companies to deny coverage to customers.
A three-page manifesto was found on suspect Luigi Mangione when he was arrested. In it, he includes the phrase “these parasites simply had it coming,” law enforcement sources told NBC News.
Lakeland case: According to the Dec. 10 arrest affidavit, BCBS had notified the FBI and the FBI called the Lakeland Police Department to report the incident the day it happened. A police officer went to Boston’s home on South Ingraham Avenue to question her.
According to police, when asked if she used the phrase, Boston told the officer, “she said it and apologized. Boston stated she used those words because it’s what is in the news right now. Boston advised she learned of the phrase because of the current events regarding the UnitedHealthcare homicide. Boston stated she did not own any firearms, and she was not a danger to anyone. Boston further stated, the health care companies played games and deserved karma from the world because they are evil.”
Boston told the officer she does not own a gun. Her medical condition is not known.
The officer wrote that he believed the statements were “meant to threaten the insurance company by using the United Healthcare CEO’s homicide to her advantage.”
“Current environment”: Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor told NewsChannel 8 that Boston is not a child and should have known better.
“She’s been in this world long enough that she certainly should know better that you can’t make threats like that in the current environment that we live in and think that we’re not going to follow up and put you in jail,” Taylor said.
Taylor has since stopped talking to reporters about the matter as he awaits a decision from the State Attorney’s Office about whether the case will be prosecuted.
$100,000 bail: In court on Dec. 11, Judge Catherine Combee stated there is probable cause for the charge of “written threat to kill or injure and conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism,” a second-degree felony punishable by 15 years in prison.
“I do find that the bond of $100,000 is appropriate considering the status of our country at this point,” Combee said.
Combee allowed for Boston to be released on house arrest, but required a GPS monitor and said she would only be allowed to go to court, her attorney’s office, a religious institution, work and a once-a-week grocery shopping trip. She is also not allowed to speak to anyone at BCBS Florida. She is not allowed to possess a firearm or ammunition.
Boston posted $10,000 bond Friday to secure the $100,000 bail.
GoFundMe: At Boston's home on Monday, a woman behind the door of the storybook cottage with vegetables growing along the front sidewalk said she had no comment.
Boston's husband, Daniel, has set up a GoFundMe account for her legal expenses.
He originally set a goal of $45,000. On Tuesday, he raised the goal to $65,000 and by Wednesday morning, the fund had raised more than $62,500 from more than 1,500 donors, many of whom gave under $25.
Experts: R. Fred Lewis, a retired Florida Supreme Court justice and current Florida Southern College professor, said upon hearing the facts of the case that it warranted charges. He said the U.S. Supreme Court established three tests a case must meet in order for a threat charge to be brought:
- Does the suspect present a clear and present danger?
- Is there an immediacy to the threat?
- Does the suspect have the capability to carry out the threat?
“The tests that developed out of the U.S. Supreme Court developed early on were from a ‘clear and present danger’ standpoint, and that was the phrase that was used by the U.S. Supreme Court to talk about what kind of words and what kind of speech were or were not protected,” Lewis said. “And unless it presented a clear and present danger, the words alone are not actionable.”
Lewis said that while the Bill of Rights guarantees free speech, not all speech is protected.
“Although you know many, many Americans believe that the Bill of Rights and all of those rights that are listed and we cherish so dearly are absolute, but they’re not absolute,” Lewis said. “You have to look to the case law to see how those rights have been applied, and have they been explained, and have they been limited, or the parameters. … Yes, you do have the right to speak, but not in any way that you desire. I mean, for example, you know, defamation, that’s not protected speech; hate speech, and those kinds of things are not protected speech.”
He said the fact that Boston does not own a gun is legally irrelevant.
“These days, apparently you can get a gun on every street corner, so I guess the ownership, per se, of a weapon is not necessarily part of the test,” he said.
As for what’s next in the case, Lewis said there are a lot of avenues the state could take.
“You just don’t know what’s going to happen as this thing processes on through. You don’t know what kind of negotiations are down for plea deals and all that kind of thing,” Lewis said.
Possible plea deal: Gary De Pury, a Pasco County lawyer who was also in U.S. Army counterintelligence, said law enforcement had no choice but to make an arrest, but in his opinion the case will probably be dropped or pleaded down to a lesser charge, which could also involve Boston taking anger-management classes.
“I think that law enforcement had an absolute duty to act because they have to protect the public, but I think this is a situation where the state attorney very easily should have, or could have, looked at this and decided not to press charges,” De Pury said. “One of the elements that has to be proven for the crime’s charge is that you have to prove that a reasonable person would have believed that to have been a threat. I would go for a speedy trial, because this is still in the news.”
He said he would also request from BCBS any memoranda they issued to employees “to be on your toes, report every threat, be vigilant. Let us know what’s going on. That’s when that operator or that adjuster or whoever was on the call was no longer a reasonable person. And that’s how I would go after that. So, I think that the prosecutor knows this and they’ll seek some sort of plea to a much lower charge.”
De Pury said if the State Attorney’s Office decides to prosecute, allows a plea deal and Boston completes pretrial intervention, does all the courses required in the allotted time, “then everything goes away.”
He said the court could expunge her record and she can also have the arrest record expunged, as well, in that scenario.
