Threats

Threats, considered legally, are intimidation by moral terrorism. Their purpose is to make the person threatened surrender some right, or pay money, or do something to his detriment from fear of a greater evil. The usual form of the crime is sending anonymously or otherwise a threatening letter demanding money or valuable property, under the menace that the victim will be murdered, or his house or property will be destroyed, or his cattle killed or wounded, or that he will be charged with some infamous crime. (The offence is committed though a guilty person be threatened.) To procure the execution of a deed by threats, or to threaten to publish a libel, are varieties of the same offence. In their extreme form such acts are punished with penal servitude for life.