Social media posts after the killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk last month caused scores of people to lose their jobs. Elected officials were threatened with recall efforts or faced calls to resign. Relationships between friends and co-workers frayed, possibly beyond repair.
Larry Bushart, 61, ended up in jail.
Mr. Bushart, a retired law enforcement officer known in his conservative rural Tennessee community as a prolific poster of liberal memes and political statements, was released on Wednesday after being held for more than a month.
“I’ve been in Facebook jail,” a surprised Mr. Bushart told an officer after he was taken into custody in late September, according to body camera footage that was later released. “But I’m really in it now.”
In many cases, the online comments that drew ire after Mr. Kirk was assassinated last month were deemed insensitive because they made light of Mr. Kirk’s death or used it to deliver a political message. But in Mr. Bushart’s case, officials in Perry County, Tenn., said that a post he had made on a community Facebook page had been perceived as a threat. He was arrested and charged with recklessly threatening mass violence at a school, a felony offense.
His release on Wednesday came after prosecutors moved to dismiss the charge, according to court records. Efforts to reach the district attorney and sheriff for Perry County were unsuccessful. In an email, Mr. Bushart’s lawyer confirmed his client’s release but had no immediate further comment.
Prosecutors did not specify why they had abandoned the charges. But the case drew widespread attention after reporting by The Intercept and the Nashville television station WTVF, among others. It also drew condemnation from free speech advocates and other critics who saw the charge as dangerous and unjustified.
Mr. Kirk was fatally shot on Sept. 10, just after taking the stage at an event at Utah Valley University. In Lexington, Tenn., a city of just under 8,000 people about halfway between Nashville and Memphis, Mr. Bushart soon began contributing to the flood of social media commentary.
He posted a series of memes in a Facebook group called What’s Happening in Perry County, in a thread publicizing a local vigil for Mr. Kirk. One of the memes featured a photo of President Trump with the words, “We have to get over it,” drawing from a statement that Mr. Trump had made last year after a school shooting in Perry, Iowa, in which a sixth grader and an administrator were killed.
“Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after,” a line under the photo and quote read.
A note of commentary had been tacked on: “This seems relevant today …”
Nick Weems, the sheriff in Perry County, Tenn., said that some local residents had seen the post and taken it as a threat to Perry County High School, prompting calls to his office.
In a televised interview with WTVF, Mr. Weems said that he believed that Mr. Bushart had “violated the law set forth by our legislature.” He was aware, he said, that the meme had been circulating long before Mr. Bushart shared it and that it was referring to the school shooting in Iowa.
“We knew,” he said. “The public did not know.”
The sheriff said Mr. Bushart had been charged after he refused to take the post down.
Mr. Bushart’s bail had been set at $2 million.
Rick Rojas is the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the South.
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