Someone can utter such speech, but they can also be arrested and prosecuted for it.
The Right to Free Speech has never included making threats of violence against another individual without facing legal liability. Such speech is, indeed, considered a form of violence itself.
Nobody is allowed to threaten someone else with violence, in the absence of a clear justification for doing so.
What this person did was a potential crime, at the very least, and is precisely the reason that the gentleman in question ended up spending the night in jail.
Cooler heads obviously prevailed on all sides, but speech which threatens criminal violence against another individual or group should result in arrest and/or prosecution, whether you consider it "Free" or not...
more specific definition to your reply for others.
Legal term Assault and Battery
Two separate offenses against the person that when used in one expression may be defined as any unlawful and unpermitted touching of another.
Assault is an act that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent, harmful, or offensive contact. The act consists of a threat of harm accompanied by an apparent, present ability to carry out the threat.
Battery is a harmful or offensive touching of another.
The main distinction between the two offenses is the existence or nonexistence of a touching or contact.
While contact is an essential element of battery, there must be an absence of contact for assault.
Sometimes assault is defined loosely to include battery.
Well said.