We’ve heard plenty of stories about folks getting themselves into hot water thanks to a poor social network post. Nothing quite like this next story, however.

22-year old Donte Jamar Sims was sentenced Wednesday to six months in prison for threatening Barack Obama in a slew of tweets. Mind you, he threatened the President in a series of numerous tweets so it was an ongoing issue.

Sims was originally arrested in September of last year for the incident. He talked about assassinating the President via his Twitter handle @DestroyLeague_D, and the authorities confirmed the account belonged to him with the help of search warrants. You can still find his tweets online, one of which has been embed below:

https://twitter.com/DestroyLeague_D/statuses/242609574576803841

The Charlotte Observer reports that Sims pleaded guilty in an attempt to avoid jail time, but unfortunately for him the judge rejected the plea offer and slapped him with some real time in the slammer.

It’s actually not all that uncommon to see death threats on Twitter, especially targeting the President. During the Presidential election, the Secret Service asked many Twitter users to report any death threats or suspicious activity encountered on the platform.

There’s a lesson to be learned here somewhere, I’m quite sure of it. While it is a little disturbing to see someone prosecuted for comments made on a social media platform you have to remember that the related information is public. That means, everyone can see the comments or in this case the death threats. If you were to make a threat about someone and they happened to see the post, well it’s safe to say that could certainly cause some harm to all parties involved.

I know many of you are going to make a comment about how obvious a lot of this is, but apparently it has to be said. Have you ever encountered a situation where someone made threats via social media?

[via Mashable]