CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) The attorney for the Virginia state trooper charged with leaving threatening notes on a neighbor’s apartment door said his client is protected by his Constitutional right to freedom of speech, and that will be central to Trooper Logan G. Pingley’s upcoming defense.

“Trooper Pingley is on the video, leaving the note. We’re not going to dispute the obvious,” attorney Brady Nicks told Cville Right Now on Friday. “The two central issues in this case are, that he was operating within the protection of his First Amendment right to free speech, so that no crime had been committed, and that this alleged victim inadvertently received this note. She was not the intended recipient of the note.”

Pingley, a trooper assigned to the Appomattox Division Area 18 office in Charlottesville, was indicted Monday on one count of felony communicating a written threat.

A woman said her boyfriend found a note on her apartment door shortly after 9 p.m. on Nov. 8 that read, “You’re not safe here” and “F— around and find out.” The couple reviewed doorbell video footage, then contacted the Albemarle County Police Department.

Police identified and then charged Pingley, who is on administrative leave pending the outcome of this case and an internal investigation by the VSP Professional Standards Division.

Nicks confirmed that the woman whose apartment the note was left at was not the intended recipient and that the intended recipient was “not unknown to law enforcement,” he said.

“This was motivated by Trooper Pingley’s desire to prevent harm in the neighborhood. He was seeking to protect people in his community,” Nicks said. “Trooper Pingley had credible evidence from multiple sources, that the person who was the intended recipient of the note, posed a serious risk to other people in the apartment complex and that is what motivated Trooper Pingley to leave that note.”

Nicks went on to say, “I think Pingley perceived a duty to protect the public at all times and that’s what he was doing here. He did take steps to inform law enforcement of what was going on.”

Jeff Fogel, the attorney for the woman who received the notes, dismissed the possibility that Pingley’s actions could be protected under the First Amendment.

“That blew me off the stage,” Fogel told Cville Right Now. “It’s like a bank robber goes into a bank, gives a note to the teller that says, ‘I have a gun. Give me all your money,’ and then claims that that’s protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Not really. And the same thing is true threatening words have never been protected by the constitution. It’s all a very bizarre occurrence.”

Nicks argued that that wording in Pingley’s notes, however, didn’t constitute a threat.

“A threat occupies a very specific area of the law and requires a degree of particularity that isn’t present here,” Nicks said. “There is no mention of the consequences. There’s no description of the mechanism by which the injury will occur, it’s not directed at a certain person. Those and other factors take it out of the realm of a threat, criminally speaking, and they bring it under the protection of the First Amendment.”

“The language that was left in the note is in a category or speech that is abrasive and some may find it offensive, but that’s the type of language is protected by the first amendment,” Nicks said.

The case could boil down to whether or not the jury believes the language on the notes was threatening or not, said former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia Tim Heaphy.

“My understanding is that there’s no factual dispute that the trooper is the one who wrote and placed those notes on the door of the neighbor,” Heaphy told Cville Right Now on Friday. “The legal question is, ‘Is that threatening?’ I believe the legal standard is, ‘Would a reasonable person who read those notes feel as if he or she was in danger? Does the language give rise to a legitimate and reasonable fear?” And the language here, ‘You’re not safe here,’ and an expletive, strikes me as the kind of thing, if it was posted on my door, I would feel as if somebody’s mad enough to say, I’m not safe. That certainly would put me in fear of bodily safety. The first amendment doesn’t protect threats.”

Heaphy said that, legally speaking, who Pingley intended the note for is not relevant, and that, as a law enforcement officer, there would be other more appropriate ways to address suspicions about criminal conduct in the neighborhood.

“A state trooper would know that the remedy is to go get a search warrant or do some law enforcement surveillance,” Heaphy said. “It’s not someone taking the law into his own hands and attempting to intimidate and stop the conduct. A state trooper would know that. This feels a little like vigilantism to me.”