Background
Lon Brandon Meeks was convicted in Bryan County of stalking after actual notice of a protective order and received a five-year sentence, with three years to serve and the final two years suspended. The protective order barred Meeks from contacting his ex-wife and her children directly or indirectly, including through social-media communications.
The prosecution centered on a nearly 40-minute YouTube video Meeks posted in May 2023. In the video, he repeatedly named and disparaged his ex-wife and her children, but made no threats. Meeks did not send or tag the video to his ex-wife; her boss found it and forwarded her a link. She testified that the video made her feel threatened, intimidated, and harassed.
The Court’s Holding
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction and remanded with instructions to dismiss because the evidence was insufficient to prove that Meeks harassed his ex-wife. Under the applicable stalking statute, harassment requires a course of conduct “directed toward” the alleged victim.
The court held that a communication about a person is not necessarily directed toward that person. The evidence showed that Meeks posted the video to his personal YouTube channel without sending it to, tagging, or otherwise notifying his ex-wife, and there was no evidence that he caused her boss to discover it. The video was instead an airing of grievances to an internet audience about his marriage, custody dispute, and perceived mistreatment by the legal system. Because the State did not prove conduct intended for his ex-wife’s intake, it did not establish statutory harassment. The court did not reach Meeks’s First Amendment claims.
Key Takeaways
- For this stalking charge, conduct must be directed toward the alleged victim, not merely concern or mention that person.
- A public social-media post is not shown to be directed toward a protected person merely because the person later learns of it and is distressed by it.
- The court resolved the case on evidentiary insufficiency and left the First Amendment issue undecided.
Why It Matters
The decision draws a statutory line between communications aimed at a person and public communications about that person. Prosecutors seeking to treat online speech as stalking must prove evidence of direction toward the protected individual, such as transmission, tagging, notification, or other proof that the communication was meant for that person.
The court also signaled that an expansive reading of “directed toward” could raise First Amendment concerns, while declining to decide those constitutional questions where the conviction failed on nonconstitutional grounds.