720 ILCS 5/29D-20 – Making a Terrorist Threat
This law makes it a serious crime to threaten to do something violent to scare or control people.
This Illinois law says that if someone threatens to do a terrorist act in order to scare a lot of people, they can be charged with a Class X felony, even if the threat couldn’t really be carried out or wasn’t made directly to a victim.
(a) A person commits the crime of making a terrorist threat if they purposely try to scare or control a large group of people and knowingly make a threat to do something violent or destructive. It doesn’t matter how the threat is made, as long as it causes a real fear that an attack might happen soon.
(b) It’s not an excuse that the threat couldn’t really happen or that it wasn’t made directly to someone who would be harmed. The threat itself is the crime.
(c) Sentence: This crime is a Class X felony, which means it is one of the most serious levels of crime in Illinois and comes with very harsh punishment, such as many years in prison.
(d) If someone makes this kind of threat about a bomb or explosive in a school, the court must make them pay back the government for the cost of sending emergency responders to check for the bomb. “Emergency response” means help from police, firefighters, the fire marshal, or ambulance workers.
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