The man arrested for posting lyrics by metal band Exodus in August to his Facebook has opened up about his experiences.
"It's surreal," 31-year-old James Evans said in an interview with Billboard recently. "I didn't think anything would come of it." On Aug. 24, Evans was listening to the band's song "Class Dismissed (A Hate Primer)" when he decided to post some lyrics to the social networking site, a common practice among users. "Student bodies lying dead in the halls, a blood splattered treatise of hate / Class dismissed is my hypothesis, gun fire ends in debate," the post read.
Police around the Greenville, KY., area began looking for Evans, first at his mother's house and then at his residence in Central City. They eventually found Evans, asked a few questions, wrote a report and left. Law enforcement officers returned in the following days to ask more questions, and by Tuesday (Aug. 26), Evans was arrested.
"They never even cuffed me, just put me in the back of the car," he told Billboard. "They knew I wasn't dangerous. They were kind of shocked, too, because they thought it had been resolved. They just had to serve it [warrant] because it was in their jurisdiction." Evans was being arrested because "he threatened to kill students and or staff at school," 14News reported the warrant stating. The Exodus fan was charged with a Class C felony for "terrorist threatenings" that carries with it anywhere from five to ten years in prison. A week later, Evans received a deferment for six months and was ordered to undergo mental evaluation. If he does so, the charges will be erased from his record.
"The First Amendment exists to protect people from government censorship of unpopular, but otherwise lawful, speech," Michael Aldridge, executive director for the ACLU of Kentucky, wrote in a statement. "There is no greater threat to our ability to exercise that right than to be thrown in jail for doing so."
Aldridge and the organization have taken over Evans' defense, Billboard notes.
