20
(1942).
Speech integral to criminal conduct is one such long-
standing category that is constitutionally unprotected, directly
applicable to the defendants' conduct here, and permissibly
proscribed by § 43A (a).12
Accordingly, the denial of the
defendants' motion for a required finding of not guilty on the
basis that they engaged in protected First Amendment activity
was not error.
3.
Sufficiency of evidence.
The defendants contend that
there was insufficient evidence of their joint venture to
criminally harass the victims, arguing that both the "directed
at" and "seriously alarms" prongs of the statute were not met.
In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, we consider the
facts in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, see
Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 676-677 (1979), and
determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found
beyond a reasonable doubt all of the statutory elements.
12
To the extent that the defendants read our holding in
O'Brien v. Borowski, 461 Mass. 415 (2012), to establish the
principle that no constitutionally unprotected category of
speech can be proscribed under G. L. c. 265, § 43A (a), unless
we have explicitly articulated so in a previous case, they are
misguided. We broadened the scope of our § 43A (a) analysis to
expressly include true threats in Borowski only because we had
specifically stated that the true threats exception did not
apply in the § 43A (a) context in Welch, 444 Mass. at 94 n.14.
Consequently, clarification was needed in Borowski that is not
needed for other unprotected categories of speech that have
never been explicitly exempted from the application of § 43A
(a).
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