Appeals Court Upholds Conviction in Wootton ‘Manuscript’ Threat Case

Maryland’s Appellate Court has upheld the conviction of a former Wootton High School student over a book describing a plan to shoot up his school, in a published opinion that for the first time interprets the state’s threat-of-mass-violence law. The court filed its decision, Ye v. State, on Oct. 28, in an opinion by Judge Graeff. The opinion names the defendant Andrea Ye, but notes that he goes by Alex and uses male pronouns; this story follows the court’s usage. Ye attended Wootton’s virtual school program at the time, according to the opinion.

What happened, according to the opinion

According to the opinion, Ye wrote a 129-page book and sent it to two friends over Instagram message at 12:46 a.m. on March 3, 2024. The opening lines read: “I want to shoot up my school. I’ve been preparing for it for the past few months.” A few lines later, discussing an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle, the book stated: “This gun is going to change lives tomorrow.”

One of the friends called 911 after reading a few pages. The friend and Ye had discussed Ye’s wish to carry out a school shooting before, and the friend had warned him against it, the opinion states. The book’s narrator, whose background closely parallels Ye’s own, is hospitalized and, in the final chapter, decides against carrying out a shooting.

A search of Ye’s phone and accounts, conducted under a warrant, turned up internet searches about an AR-15 and past school shooters, along with photos of a hand-drawn stick-figure image of people being shot and of a map of Wootton, the opinion states. Ye had been barred from the Wootton campus under a no-trespass order since January 2023, after a mental health therapist working at the school determined in December 2022 that he had “intense homicidal ideation around a school shooting,” according to the opinion.

The charge and the trial

Montgomery County police arrested Ye on April 16, 2024, according to the opinion, and charged him with knowingly threatening a crime of mass violence under Maryland Code, Criminal Law § 3-1001(b). MyMCMedia reported at the time that the arrest followed an FBI tip, and that county police coordinated with Montgomery County Public Schools to increase security at Wootton afterward.

Ye was found guilty on Jan. 8, 2025, after a two-day bench trial in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, according to the opinion. Afterward, State’s Attorney John McCarthy credited the friend for reporting the book, saying he “did what we have been preaching in many many ways to the young people in this community … if you see something, say something,” MyMCMedia reported.

The sentence, and where it stands

The circuit court sentenced Ye to 10 years of incarceration, with all but 12 months suspended, plus five years of supervised probation, according to the opinion (p.1).

By then Ye had been held for 14 months since his arrest, MyMCMedia reported at the May 2025 sentencing. He waived credit for that time, so the one-year term began on the day he was sentenced, May 28, 2025. Prosecutors had asked for a 10-year sentence served at the Patuxent Youthful Offenders Program, and the defense had asked for time served, according to MyMCMedia. The court set a Sept. 25, 2025, hearing on plans for Ye after his release, MyMCMedia reported.

On Oct. 14, 2025, the circuit court reduced the unsuspended portion of the sentence to 140 days, the opinion states. That was 139 days after the term began. Neither the opinion nor the public reporting Moderately MOCO reviewed gives a release date. The sentence also includes five years of supervised probation.

Why the opinion is published

Ye appealed, arguing his book was not a constitutionally unprotected “true threat” and that prosecutors had not proven he acted with the required intent. The court disagreed on both points. Ye argued, and the court did not dispute, that “no published Maryland opinion has construed CR § 3-1001 or the meaning of its pivotal terms ‘knowingly’ and ‘threaten.’” Because the opinion is published, rather than one of the Appellate Court’s more common unreported rulings, it sets binding precedent for future cases under the statute.

The court first decided how closely to scrutinize the trial judge’s findings. Determining whether a statement is a true threat requires only “‘ordinary principles of logic and common experience’ rather than legal judgment,” the court wrote, so it applied the traditional, deferential test for sufficiency of the evidence rather than independently reweighing the record, as Ye had asked.

True threats of violence are a category of speech the First Amendment does not protect, the court wrote, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Counterman v. Colorado. That decision set recklessness, meaning a speaker is aware others could regard a statement as threatening and sends it anyway, as the minimum mental state the Constitution requires for a threat conviction. Maryland’s statute sets a higher bar: the court wrote that “the General Assembly has expressly stated that knowledge is the required mens rea for a conviction under CR § 3-1001.” Prosecutors therefore had to show Ye knew, not merely risked, that his words would be taken as a threat.

The court found the evidence met that higher standard. It pointed to the circuit court’s finding that Ye was “fully aware of the impact of his statements based upon his own words,” and to Ye’s own prior messages worrying that his writing and online history could be seen as threats. Sending the book to the friend after the friend had already raised concerns about a shooting, the court wrote, supported the finding that Ye knew the friend would perceive the book as a threat.

No dissent, and what happens next

Judges Zic and Zarnoch, a senior judge specially assigned, joined Graeff’s opinion; none dissented or wrote separately. The court affirmed the circuit court’s judgment and ordered Ye to pay the appeal’s costs.

Ye can ask the Supreme Court of Maryland, the state’s highest court, to review the decision; the opinion does not address whether he will. The case is separate from the February 2026 shooting at Wootton High School.

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