‘Angry Patriot Hippie’ Loses Appeal Over Threats in Online Video

A woman convicted of threatening to shoot an FBI agent in a video posted on her Instagram and TikTok accounts lost her Eleventh Circuit appeal Tuesday.

Suzanne Ellen Kaye, who posted to social media under the username “Angry Patriot Hippie,” challenged the district court’s decision to exclude her expert’s testimony, saying that the expert should have been permitted to educate the jury about protected political speech and the First Amendment.

But the district court properly excluded the testimony on the grounds that it risked confusing the issues for the jury, the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit said.

It was also well within the district court’s discretion to conclude that admitting the testimony would create “an unjustifiable risk that the jury would substitute the expert’s evaluation of the video for their own,” the court said.

The proposed testimony “included impermissible legal conclusions” about whether or not a true threat existed, it said.

The appeals court’s unpublished decision also rejected Kaye’s arguments over the jury instructions.

Among other things, Kaye’s proposed instructions were incomplete, the court said.

Her instructions included the subjective mens rea requirement—that is, that the person transmitted the communication with the knowledge that it would be viewed as a threat. But they omitted the objective part of the offense—that is, that a reasonable person would understand the communication to be a threat.

The instructions that the district court gave also “covered the substance of Kaye’s requested instruction,” namely “that the jury could convict Kaye ‘only if’ it found a true threat, that political speech is protected by the First Amendment, and that the jury should consider the political-speech exception in this case.”

The district court’s decision not to give Kaye’s instruction didn’t “substantially impair” her ability to assert that her speech was political in nature and protected by the First Amendment. Her lawyer argued as much at closing, the court said. Kaye was also able to testify that her statements were “parody” delivered for “shock value.”

In the video, Kaye talked about a phone call she received from an FBI agent about a tip it had received about Kaye and January 6th.

She said, in part, “I’m an American. I know my fucking rights. My First Amendment right to free speech. My Second Amendment right to carry a gun, to shoot your fucking ass if you come to my house.”

Kaye was ultimately sentenced to 18 months in prison, reflecting a downward variance from the guidelines range of 27-33 months.

Kaye is represented by the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Fort Lauderdale.

The case is United States v. Kaye, 11th Cir., No. 23-11423, unpublished 1/16/24.