Concord
Michael Hanes, 57, left a voicemail for the Pembroke town administrator about snow plowed “right up onto my sidewalk” in February 2016. Hanes used profanity and said he wanted an employee’s head on a stick. He also said he would start shooting plow drivers if they kept it up and kill them.
The administrator called police, who went to Hanes’ home. Hanes was convicted of trying to influence a public servant by threatening harm, a felony. He was sentenced to a year in jail, with all but seven days suspended.
On appeal, his lawyer argued Hanes was overcome with anger in the moment. He said Hanes wasn’t expressing a serious intent to commit an unlawful act.
The call starts relatively calm, and the anger builds during the call, defense lawyer Christopher Johnson told the court in March. “What this tells us is that this is not somebody who is speaking coldly and calculatedly,” he said.
Johnson said the anger quickly passed, and by the time police got to Hanes’ home, he was remorseful and cooperative.
But, what if a plow driver showed up at Hanes’ house and not the police, senior Assistant Attorney General Susan McGinnis had asked.
“Had one of those public employees shown up right after he said that, I don’t know that he would’ve not carried through with this threat,” she said.
The court found, 4-0, that the evidence was sufficient to show Hanes conveyed “threats of violence with the intent of influencing the town administrator’s implementation of the town’s snow plowing procedures.”
The court said his speech met the definition of a “true threat,” and fell outside of the protection of the First Amendment.
Hanes said on Wednesday he would like to appeal. He said he lived at the house for nine years and consistently had problems with the snow piled up right on his doorstep.
“I got upset because the day I called, I was calling to report it again,” he said. “The plow truck just drove by. I could hear the snow being pelted up against the side of my house.”