Case ID: ohio-np-ns_13/html/0325-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Warner, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

INVALIDITY OF LOITERING ORDINANCE.
    Court of Insolvency of Hamilton County.
    In re Stella Dunlap; In re Samuel Dixon; and In re Fred Steward.
    
    Decided, March 5, 1912.
    
      Loitering — No Authority Conferred XJpon Municipalities to Prohibit by Ordinance — Disorderly Conduct — Sections 3658 and 3664.
    1. Municipalities are without statutory authority for the enactment of an ordinance making loitering or wandering about the streets a crime.
    2. Disorderly conduct is not defined by any Ohio statute, or by any ordinance of the city in which the accused was convicted of loitering, and the court is unable to sustain the conviction by holding that loitering constitutes disorderly conduct as a matter of law.
    
      A. Lee Beaty, for Stella Dunlap and Samuel Dixon.
    W.'W. Hester, for Fred Steward.
    
      Bernard G. Fox, Police Court Prosecutor, contra.
    
      
       Affirmed by the Circuit Court in the case of In Re Opal Howard, 15 C. (N.S.), 171.
    
   Warner, J.

Heard on applications for writs of habeas corpus.

These persons were committed to the city workhouse' by the police court," having been found guilty of loitering — -wandering about the streets — contrary to a part of the provisions of Section 907, city ordinances. There is no statutory authority giving a municipality power to make loitering or wandering about the streets a crime, unless it be found in Sections 3658 and 3664 of the General Code, granting authority to prevent and punish persons guilty of “disorderly conduct.”

But “disorderly conduct” is not defined in any statute or ordinance, and the Court is unable to say, as a matter of law, that the acts charged against these persons, of which they have been convicted and sentenced, constitute such conduct.

Writs allowed and prisoners discharged.