Oklahoma City Man Receives Eight-Month Sentence for Twitter Threat

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK—Today, DANIEL KNIGHT HAYDEN, 52, of Oklahoma City, was sentenced by United States District Judge Tim Leonard to eight months in prison for sending threatening communications via Twitter. According to evidence at trial and from Court records, on April 14, 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation became aware various postings had been made on Twitter, a social networking site, by an individual using the name “CitizenQuasar” that made a threat to kill or injure police officers at a public tax protest assembly called a “Tea Party” scheduled for April 15, 2009, at the Oklahoma State Capitol. The investigation also revealed that an individual with a username of “Citizen Quasar” had a MySpace account containing similar anti-government rhetoric. Based on the threat, the FBI arrested Hayden on April 15.

Hayden was indicted by a federal grand jury on May 6, 2009. Following a jury trial, Hayden was convicted on July 7, 2009, of knowingly transmitting a threatening communication.

Hayden has been in custody since June of 2009, and the Court gave him credit for the time he had been incarcerated.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andre Caldwell and Dave Walling.