Re: Being a jerk is not a crime

There are way too many judges who are the same type of pig, (and I will keep 
using pig to describe these types - they are relatively intelligent, they feed 
on power like a pig feeds on slop, and they become filthy as they wallow in 
their power), as way too many cops.  They were prosecutors before they were 
judges, indoctrinated and intoxicated with the power of the state.  


These kind of things are happening way too often to be dismissed as isolated 
incidents.  While these cases may be rectified by a higher court that is a high 
price for a citizen to have to pay to have his pre-existing rights vindicated.  
And nothing is done to discourage the underlying swine-like behavior of the cop, 
prosecutor and judge who validated the abuses in the first place.  


Mike F.




________________________________
From: Lance McLain <[email protected]>
To: DADL-OT (Mailing List) <[email protected]>
Sent: Fri, June 3, 2011 7:59:49 PM
Subject: [DADL-OT] Being a jerk is not a crime

Being a jerk is not a crime. That's a lucky break for many of us, but it wasn't 
enough to keep Nate Cox out of hot water. On a fine spring day in April, Cox was 
driving down the street in Richmond, Virginia when he spied a member of the VCU 
campus Police Department nearby. Cox grabbed a bullhorn and shouted, "Stop 
harassing people, we pay your paychecks!" (Why did he have a bullhorn? That's an 
interesting question, but orthogonal to the issues here.)

Officer S.W. Kelley—the target of the taunt—jumped in his car, gave chase and 
pulled Cox over. When Cox asked why, Kelley told him, "You looked like you were 
a little distracted when you were driving." Kelley wrote up a charge of 
obstructing justice -- which is an odd thing to write someone up for if you're 
concerned that he's not keeping his eyes on the road. Cox asked how he had 
obstructed justice. Kelley replied that Cox "distracted me from doing my job."

Cox demanded to speak with Kelley's supervisor. When the supervisor arrived, he 
and Cox had a frank exchange of views, and Kelley issued a new citation, for 
disorderly conduct. The supervisor told Cox that yelling at Kelley through a 
bullhorn was disorderly conduct. Cox, who also had a camera with him, posted a 
video of the incident online. You can find it at 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y85wzcIYYg—or just Google "the state vs. Nate Cox."

If you watch the clip, you might come away with the impression that Cox acted 
like an obnoxious punk. How? He said something that wasn't nice to a policeman, 
and he said it loudly. And as Kelley testified, "his attitude and the way he 
went about carrying himself" were on the sassy side—though there's no law 
requiring citizens to display cringing submission in the presence of a 
policeman, either.

Now, none of us is a mind reader. But it seems fair to wonder whether Kelley 
would have written Cox up if Cox had bellowed something more flattering to the 
ego, such as: "Thanks for keeping our streets safe, Officer!"

If the answer is no, then it looks as though Cox received a fine and a suspended 
jail sentence simply for expressing an opinion the government doesn't like. They 
do that sort of thing—in places like Cuba and North Korea. We're not supposed to 
do it in America.

But suppose the answer is yes. Suppose Cox had been given a summons for 
distracting Officer Kelley with high-decibel flattery. Does yelling at a cop as 
you're driving by meet the standard for disorderly conduct?

Not hardly. Virginia law specifies that disorderly conduct "shall not be deemed 
to include the utterance or display of any words." Further, it must have "a 
direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the person … at whom … such conduct 
was directed." And there is a whole string of cases in which the courts have 
found that people who said things much worse to police officers than Cox did had 
a First Amendment right to do so. In one, Ford v. City of Newport News, the 
accused "was so loud and boisterous that apartment dwellers in a nearby building 
came out on their porch and asked if the officers needed help." Yet the court 
found no basis for a disorderly-conduct charge.

Then there is City of Houston v. Hill, in which Raymond Wayne Hill started 
yelling at two Houston cops during an incident in 1982. "Why don't you pick on 
someone your own size?" he hollered. One of the officers asked, "[A]re you 
interrupting me in my official capacity as a Houston police officer?" Hill shot 
back, "Yes, why don't you pick on somebody my size?" The officers took him up on 
the suggestion and arrested Hill for violating a city ordinance prohibiting 
"intentionally interrupt[ing] a city policeman … by verbal challenge during an 
investigation."

This, the Supreme Court said, was wrong: "The freedom of individuals verbally to 
oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the 
principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police 
state," the court ruled. (By poetic coincidence, one of the officers in the Hill 
case was named Kelley.) Time and again, the courts also have said police 
officers should "exercise a higher degree of restraint" than the average 
citizen, even in response to so-called fighting words.

Yet despite all this, a couple of weeks ago Nate Cox was found guilty.

Earlier in the proceedings, Cox's lawyer had made a motion to dismiss the case. 
Richmond Judge Robert Pustilnik was unpersuaded. "Based on the content of the 
statement, your client was trying to be a jerk, and create trouble in a 
situation which had nothing to do with him, in which he had no business. Motion 
is denied."

Pustilnik is not what anyone would call a sworn enemy of the First Amendment. 
Back in December, he struck down the city of Richmond's new noise ordinance as 
unconstitutional, on the grounds that it was overly broad and that it 
discriminated in favor of religious utterances, which it exempted.

But this case, Pustilnik said during the trial, "is not a First Amendment 
situation. This is not some free-speech rights. This is a person who was … 
trying to aggravate an officer and incite something … for absolutely no reason."
Cox has appealed. Five bucks says he'll win. Charles Dickens may have been right 
when his Mr. Bumble called the law "a ass—a idiot." But there's nothing in it 
that says you can't act like one.

A. Barton Hinkle is a columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. This article 
originally appeared at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.


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