◆ SpookStack

intent to carry out the threat is sufficient. In Patillo, two security guards at a naval shipyard were riding together in a patrol car when one of them told the other that he intended to kill President Nixon. 431 F.2d at 294. After repeating the threat under Secret Service surveillance, he was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 871.!' Id. In reversing defendant’s conviction and remanding for a new trial, the court opined: We hold that where, as in Patillo's case, a true threat against the person of the President is uttered without communication to the President intended, the threat can form a basis for conviction under the terms of Section 871(a) only if made with a present intention to do injury to the President. Such intent may take the form of a bad purpose to personally do harm to the President or to incite some other person to do the injury. This is the most reasonable construction of the statute's plain language viewed in light of Congress' manifest purpose to protect the safety of the Chief Executive. There is no danger to the President's safety from one who utters a threat and has no intent to actually do what he threatens. Id. at 297-98 (footnote, citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Patillo is not persuasive in this context. First of all, that court was interpreting the willfulness requirement of § 871 and applied a subjective standard, specifically a present intention test. In Kosma, however, the Third Circuit rejected a subjective standard under § 871 a8 At the time Patillo was decided, the statute read: Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect, or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of the President, or Vice President-elect, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. 431 F.2d at 294. For present purposes, the language of § 871 has remained essentially unchanged. 17 AO 72A (Rev. 8/82)