A 35-year-old Houston man is facing a felony charge after he allegedly called the Texas governor's office and left a voicemail threatening to stab staff members because he could not access anime online. Joseph Roy Ozment called the governor's office just after 1:30 p.m. on July 25, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety, and now faces a third-degree felony terroristic threat charge against a public servant.
The voicemail alarmed the employee who received it badly enough that the staffer reported fearing for their own life, the lives of coworkers and the safety of the general public, as reported by Chron. Investigators traced the call back to Ozment's house, and state troopers allege he was trying to pressure the governor's office into changing Texas law by threatening violence. Texas DPS has not said which specific anime title or streaming service Ozment was attempting to use when he made the call.
A Rant Rooted in Misunderstanding
According to the outlet's reporting, Ozment told authorities a Texas law was blocking his access to anime, and his voicemail included the profanity-laced demand to “unlock my f--king anime.” But the article notes that Crunchyroll, HIDIVE and Yomi were all still accessible in Texas at the time of the reporting, meaning no mainstream anime streaming platform had actually gone dark statewide. Ozment also already had an age-verified Google account, and the outlet reports that a separate Texas law requiring Apple and Google to verify users' ages before app downloads was likely not the source of any blockage he may have encountered.
Texas has passed a cluster of laws in recent years aimed at restricting minors' access to explicit or harmful online content, and the confusion around what those laws actually cover appears to have fueled Ozment's anger. Texas enacted an age-verification law affecting some pornography websites in 2023, a measure that led adult platform Pornhub to block all Texas IP addresses rather than comply with a government-ID verification mandate, according to FOX 7 Austin. Hoodline previously reported on that shutdown when it first hit Texas users in 2024.
The Legal Landscape Behind the Confusion
That 2023 measure, House Bill 1181, requires commercial websites where more than a third of the content is sexually explicit to verify visitors are at least 18, with daily fines of up to $10,000 per violation for noncompliance, per the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. In June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that law in a 6-3 ruling in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, finding that state age-verification requirements for commercial adult sites survive intermediate First Amendment scrutiny, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Texas also enacted House Bill 18, known as the SCOPE Act, on September 1, 2024, requiring digital service providers to verify user ages and secure parental consent before collecting data from minors, per the Office of the Texas Attorney General. The Fifth Circuit blocked part of that law on July 25, the same day as Ozment's alleged call, striking down a provision requiring continuous monitoring and filtering of minors' content while leaving the state's age-verification framework in place, as Hoodline detailed in its coverage of the federal court ruling. Separately, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 20 in June 2025 targeting AI-generated child sexual abuse material, a law that stirred anxiety among anime and manga fans over whether broadly worded provisions on animated content could sweep in legitimate media, according to Marketplace.
Felony Charge Carries Years, Not Just a Fine
Under Texas Penal Code § 22.07(a)(6) and § 22.07(e), threatening violence to influence the conduct of a branch or agency of state government is a third-degree felony, and prosecutors say Ozment now faces two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 if convicted, according to Saputo Toufexis. Under Texas legal precedent, the offense turns on the actor's intent to instill fear or influence official action rather than proof the person had any actual capability or plan to follow through, per Wilkerson And Campbell. That means prosecutors do not need to show Ozment possessed a knife or any concrete plan to carry out the threat to stab officials at the governor's office in order to pursue the felony charge.
The case fits a pattern of aggressive prosecution in Texas for electronic threats against public figures and events. In May, San Antonio authorities arrested a 26-year-old man on the same third-degree felony terroristic-threat charge after he allegedly posted online bomb threats targeting a political event, according to We Got This Covered. Public court notices reviewed by the Daily Court Review show Ozment had prior family court proceedings in Harris County's 308th Judicial District Court in 2016, confirming a long-term residency history in the Houston area. Ozment remains under criminal investigation in Travis County as the case moves forward.
