Case Explained: National political and legal figures testify in trial of Nevada man accused of threats – Legal Perspective

A parade of prominent legal and political figures have testified in the ongoing Las Vegas trial of a man accused of threatening to execute public officials.

In prosecutors’ view, Spencer Gear made “true threats” that disrupted people’s lives, caused fear and were intended to influence his victims’ actions.

To hear his public defenders tell it, the statements at issue were not real threats, but political rhetoric protected by the First Amendment.

Gear is accused of making a dozen threats from Nevada to victims across the country between 2023 and 2024.

Witnesses who have testified so far include multiple judges, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas).

In Gear’s messages, he laid out “in excruciating detail how he and his men, as he called them, would execute his victims, public servants, simply for doing their jobs,” said federal prosecutor Jacob Operskalski in an opening statement Wednesday, according to a court transcript.

The calls dealt with cases involving now-President Donald Trump, the treatment of defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, issues related to transgender people and border policy, said Operskalski.

Call logs showed Gear’s phone made all of the threatening calls that were the basis for the charges he faces, according to the prosecutor.

Sean McClelland, a federal public defender for Gear, said elected officials often use phrasing similar to Gear.

“Like it or not, politics recently uses harsh language, angry language, violent language,” he said. “In politics, people threaten each other with death. They accuse each other of treason. They tell people that the punishment for treason is death.”

He told jurors that they could hate Gear’s words, but that his speech was not a crime.

Operskalski said Gear’s threats were not ordinary political discourse. Gear’s messages included phrases like “This is a death threat. You’re all going to die,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey addressed the First Amendment debate in an instruction to jurors at the start of the trial.

“The First Amendment protects speech that is discriminatory, hateful, harsh, offensive, upsetting, outrageous or insulting,” she said. “First Amendment protections are particularly applicable in speech involving matters of public debate and interest. However, the First Amendment does not protect speech that constitutes a clear threat.”

New York U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan testified via Zoom Friday.

He oversaw the civil trial in which columnist E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of damaging her reputation following her claims that he sexually abused her.

Kaplan said he learned of a threatening voicemail his office received during that trial. Prosecutors played a recording of the message, in which the caller angrily demanded Kaplan dismiss the case, called the judge a “traitor” and “scumbag” and said, “Get your head on right or we’re going to take it off.”

The judge testified that he has received a number of nasty calls, but that this one stood out because of the “explicitness of the threat,” personal nature and unusual zeal or determination.

“It was a threat of violence,” he said.

The call affected him in multiple ways, he said. He stopped wearing his customary western style hat to work, he said, suggesting he wanted to avoid making himself look distinctive, and when he and his wife went to their house in the country, he was more cautious.

New York Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over Trump’s hush money case, and Bragg, who prosecuted that case, testified Wednesday.

Operskalski indicated the two were threatened in a voicemail left with the district attorney’s office in which the caller said, in part, “We’re going to round them up and hang them.”

Bragg said his office received a significant amount of threats during the Trump case. He said he had not listened to the voicemail at issue until a few weeks before Gear’s trial, but found it “disconcerting and troubling.”

He noticed its length, “the intensity of the tone” and its “pointed” language, he said.

Describing his reaction to the message, Merchan said he was “probably a little numb when I first heard it, and then it sinks in and it’s alarming.”

He said he took the call as a threat and felt the caller was serious.

“It’s concerning to me, and it’s concerning for anyone who’s with me,” he added, according to court transcripts. “It affected the time that I spent with my children, where I went with them, what I did with them, when I spent time with them. I felt that anyone who was with me could potentially be hurt as well.”

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.