Alabama stalking laws split the offense into two degrees. First-degree stalking is a Class C felony carrying one year and a day to ten years in prison, and it applies when someone repeatedly follows or harasses another person and makes a threat, spoken or implied, intended to cause reasonable fear of death or serious bodily harm.1Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-6-90 – Stalking in the First Degree Second-degree stalking is a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, and it covers repeated unwanted contact that causes emotional harm or reasonable fear about the victim’s job or career, but only after the person has been told to stop.2Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-6-90.1 – Stalking in the Second Degree Victims can also seek a protection order, and stalking that crosses state lines or uses the internet can bring federal charges on top of state ones.
What Counts as Stalking Under Alabama Law
Every stalking charge in Alabama runs through a set of definitions in Section 13A-6-92. Prosecutors have to prove these building blocks, and defendants often challenge the case on the same ground.
A course of conduct is a series of acts over time showing a continuing purpose. One isolated act, however alarming, does not qualify.3Justia. Alabama Code 13A-6-92 – Definitions
A credible threat can be spoken outright or implied through behavior. It has to be made with both the intent and the apparent ability to carry it out, and it must be serious enough to make the target fear for their own safety or a family member’s.
Harasses means an intentional course of conduct aimed at a specific person that alarms, annoys, or interferes with the person’s freedom of movement and serves no legitimate purpose. The conduct has to be severe enough that a reasonable person would suffer substantial emotional distress, and the victim must actually experience that distress. Constitutionally protected activity is expressly excluded, so lawful protest, journalism, and political speech cannot be treated as stalking on their own.
Stalking in the First Degree
First-degree stalking, defined in Alabama Code Section 13A-6-90, requires three things at once. The defendant must intentionally and repeatedly follow or harass the victim, make a threat that is either expressed or implied, and act with the intent to place the victim in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily harm.1Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-6-90 – Stalking in the First Degree
The threat does not have to be a direct verbal statement. Repeatedly showing up at someone’s home after being told to leave, paired with menacing gestures or behavior, can supply an implied threat if a reasonable person would read it that way. What pushes conduct into felony territory is the specific kind of fear the threat targets: fear of death or serious physical injury, not just emotional upset or damage to a career.
Stalking in the Second Degree
Second-degree stalking, under Section 13A-6-90.1, reaches conduct that stops short of threatening physical harm but still causes real damage. A person commits the offense when, acting with an improper purpose, they intentionally and repeatedly follow, harass, call, or initiate contact with the victim, the victim’s immediate family, or someone the victim knows. Contact can be verbal, electronic, or any other form of communication.2Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-6-90.1 – Stalking in the Second Degree
Two additional elements make second-degree stalking distinctive. The conduct must cause material harm to the victim’s mental or emotional health, or make the victim reasonably fear that their employment, business, or career is in jeopardy. And the person doing it must have been previously told to stop. That prior warning is a hard requirement. If no one ever communicated a demand to cease, the second-degree charge fails on that element alone, though the conduct might still fit under a different statute like harassing communications.
Penalties for Both Degrees
First-degree stalking is a Class C felony. A conviction carries a prison sentence of no less than one year and one day and no more than ten years.4Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-5-6 – Sentences of Imprisonment for Felonies The court can add a fine up to $15,000, and up to double that amount if the stalker profited from the offense or caused the victim financial loss.5Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-5-11 – Fines for Felonies
Second-degree stalking is a Class B misdemeanor, carrying a maximum jail sentence of up to six months.6Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-5-7 – Sentences of Imprisonment for Misdemeanors The gap between six months and ten years is enormous, and the dividing line is a single element: whether the defendant made a threat aimed at causing fear of death or serious bodily injury. That one fact turns a misdemeanor into a felony.
Harassing Communications
Alabama has a separate statute that often appears alongside stalking charges. Under Section 13A-11-8, a person commits harassing communications when they contact someone by telephone, mail, electronic means, or other written communication with the intent to harass or alarm, and do so in a manner likely to cause that result. The statute also covers phone calls made with no legitimate purpose and lewd or obscene language directed at someone by phone. Legitimate business communications are exempt.7Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-11-8 – Harassing Communications
Harassing communications is a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to three months in jail.6Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-5-7 – Sentences of Imprisonment for Misdemeanors Prosecutors sometimes tack it on when the harassing behavior included electronic messages or phone calls.
How Victims Get a Protection Order
Alabama law lets victims petition for a protection order that can prohibit the stalker from contacting, harassing, threatening, or coming near the victim or the victim’s children. The order can bar all forms of communication, whether in person, by phone, electronically, or through a third party.8Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 30-5-7 – Issuance of Protection Orders
You file the petition at the county courthouse where you live or have temporarily relocated. A judge can issue an emergency ex parte order right away, without notice to the other side, when the situation calls for it. After notice and a hearing, the court may issue a final order. That final order is permanent unless the court specifies otherwise or a later order modifies it. There is no filing fee, though a judge may order fees paid at the conclusion of the case.
If you already have a protection order from another state and move to or travel through Alabama, federal law requires Alabama courts and law enforcement to honor it as if it were issued in Alabama. The order does not have to be registered or filed here to be enforceable.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 2265 – Full Faith and Credit Given to Protection Orders
Common Defenses to a Stalking Charge
The most direct defense goes to intent. Both degrees of stalking require intentional conduct. If the behavior was accidental, coincidental, or misinterpreted, the prosecution’s case is in trouble. For first-degree stalking, the intent requirement is more specific still: the defendant must have intended, through a threat, to cause fear of death or serious bodily harm.
The “repeated” element is another pressure point. A single frightening encounter does not satisfy the course-of-conduct definition. The defense may argue that the alleged incidents were too few, too spread out, or too disconnected to form a pattern.3Justia. Alabama Code 13A-6-92 – Definitions
For second-degree stalking, the prior-warning requirement is often the weakest link in the state’s case. If the defendant was never told to stop, the charge fails.2Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-6-90.1 – Stalking in the Second Degree
Reasonableness is another line of attack. Alabama’s harassment definition already builds in a reasonable-person standard, and defense counsel can present evidence that the conduct would not have alarmed an ordinary person in the victim’s position.
First Amendment Considerations
Because Alabama’s harassment definition excludes constitutionally protected conduct, some cases raise the question of where protected speech ends and criminal threats begin. In Counterman v. Colorado (2023), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a conviction based on threatening statements requires the prosecution to show at minimum that the defendant acted recklessly, meaning they were aware others could view the statements as threatening but made them anyway.10Supreme Court of the United States. Counterman v. Colorado, No. 22-138 Hyperbolic, political, or rhetorical speech does not meet that standard even if the listener feels threatened.
When Stalking Becomes a Federal Crime
Stalking that crosses state lines or uses interstate communication can trigger federal charges under 18 U.S.C. Section 2261A, in addition to or instead of Alabama charges. The statute covers two main scenarios: traveling across state lines with intent to harass, intimidate, or surveil someone, and using mail, the internet, or other interstate communication to engage in a course of stalking conduct.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2261A – Stalking
The federal statute reaches further than Alabama’s in places. It protects not only the victim but also the victim’s immediate family, spouse, intimate partner, and even a pet or service animal from reasonable fear of death or serious injury. It also covers conduct that causes, or would reasonably be expected to cause, substantial emotional distress, even without a direct threat. Federal penalties are set through separate sentencing provisions and can include significant prison time and fines.