Title: Gilbreath v. State

State: florida

Issuer: Florida Supreme Court

Document:

650 So. 2d 10 (1995)
Sara GILBREATH, Petitioner,
v.
STATE of Florida, Respondent.
No. 83090.

Supreme Court of Florida.
February 2, 1995.
Gary R. Gossett, Jr., Sebring, for petitioner.
Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., Robert J. Krauss, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Chief of Crim. Law, and Brenda S. Taylor, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for respondent.
WELLS, Justice.
We have for review a decision of the district court that expressly declares to be valid section 365.16(1)(a), Florida Statutes (1991), 629 So. 2d 962. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(3), Fla. Const.
Petitioner was charged with making an obscene or harassing telephone call to the home of Ronald A. Hegadis, a postal service management employee. Mr. Hegadis filed a complaint/arrest affidavit against petitioner in which he set forth the following statements made by petitioner to him:
In a bench trial before the county court, the postal employee testified that over a two-year *11 period prior to the subject telephone call, he had received at his home approximately 30 similar calls from petitioner. The postal employee testified that he asked petitioner not to call him, told her that he did not like the language she used or the threats she made, and told her he would not relay the threats to the other postal employees. The postal employee further testified that he believed petitioner called him at home to harass him, that these calls annoyed and offended him, and that the threats were aimed at him because he was in a management position at the post office.
The trial court found petitioner guilty of making an obscene or harassing phone call in violation of section 365.16(1)(a), Florida Statutes (1991). This conviction was appealed to the circuit court. In a well-written and well-reasoned order on appeal, the circuit court affirmed the conviction and sustained the statute against the attack that it was an unconstitutional infringement of the right to free speech.
Petitioner sought review from the district court of appeal, which approved the circuit court's decision declaring section 365.16(1)(a), Florida Statutes (1991), valid. We agree with the circuit court's reasoning and approve the decision of the district court. We do, however, narrow the statute's scope by limiting it to telephone calls in which the caller possesses an intent to abuse, threaten, or harass.
We believe the essential point of this case was correctly assessed by the circuit court in its order.
Gilbreath v. State, No. 92-55 (Fla. 10th Cir. Ct. September 8, 1993).
The district court emphasized, as do we, that the breadth of the statute was limited by its post-Keaton amendment which restricted the statute only to telephone communications made to a person at a location where that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, with an intent to offend, annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass. We do further restrict the statute only to calls or language that intend to abuse, threaten, or harass.
With these restrictions we find section 365.16(1)(a) valid for reasons similar to those upon which we found subsection (1)(b) valid. In State v. Elder, 382 So. 2d 687, 690 (Fla. 1980), we noted that subsection (1)(b) of this statute was not a proscription of pure speech. Rather, we held that the statutory provision was not directed at the communication of opinions or ideas but at conduct that is the act of making a telephone call or a series of telephone calls without disclosing identity with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass the recipient of the call. Though subsection (1)(a) of the statute pertains to identified callers rather than anonymous callers, as under subsection (1)(b), the intent requirement of the statute is presently the same and, similarly, it is the conduct of intentionally making such a call into a place of expected privacy, not pure speech, which is proscribed.
Aptly, the United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, stated an obvious fact of modern life:
Thorne v. Bailey, 846 F.2d 241, 243 (4th Cir.) (quoting State v. Thorne, 175 W. Va. 452, 333 S.E.2d 817, 819 cert. denied, 474 U.S. 996, 106 S. Ct. 413, 88 L. Ed. 2d 363 (1985)), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 984, 109 S. Ct. 538, 102 L. Ed. 2d 569 (1988).
The petitioner acknowledges, as do we, that "[t]he State's interest in protecting the well-being, tranquility, and privacy of the home is certainly of the highest order in a free and civilized society." Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S. 455, 471, 100 S. Ct. 2286, 2296, 65 L. Ed. 2d 263 (1980). In the case of Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 108 S. Ct. 2495, 101 L. Ed. 2d 420 (1988), the Court held:
487 U.S.  at 484-85, 108 S. Ct.  at 2502 (citations omitted). We believe that the statute at issue protects this interest by limiting its application to calls made to a listener with the intent to abuse, threaten, or harass where the listener has a reasonable expectation of privacy.
We narrow the statute's construction and excise the indefinite and vague terms "offend" and "annoy." We do this in accord with the court's discretion to limit a statute to what is constitutional when the statute as so limited is complete in itself and consistent with the stated or obvious legislative intent. State v. Stalder, 630 So. 2d 1072 (Fla. 1994); Garden v. Frier, 602 So. 2d 1273 (Fla. 1992); Firestone v. News-Press Publishing Co., 538 So. 2d 457 (Fla. 1989). We conclude that the intent of this statute is to prohibit intentional abusive, threatening, and harassing conduct by use of the telephone in the manner specified against a person where that person has an expectation of privacy. "Offend" and "annoy" are indefinite as to meaning and give rise to subjective vague connotations. The statute is complete and sufficiently narrow without these terms.
Petitioner further has asserted that even if the statute is constitutional, there was insufficient evidence presented at the trial to sustain her conviction. Our review of the record reveals that there was indeed sufficient evidence for the trial court to find petitioner guilty of a violation of the statute as we have narrowed it.
Therefore the decision of the district court is approved, and the statute is valid as limited and narrowed by this decision.
It is so ordered.
GRIMES, C.J., and OVERTON and SHAW, JJ., concur.
HARDING, J., concurs in result only.
ANSTEAD, J., dissents with an opinion, in which KOGAN, J., concurs.
ANSTEAD, Justice, dissenting.
Because the scope of this statute remains as broad as the statute we considered in State v. Keaton, 371 So. 2d 86 (Fla. 1979), I think we are bound by Keaton to again invalidate the statute. In Keaton we held:
Id. at 90-93 (footnote omitted).
The statute as now drafted still punishes speech that takes place in a consensual telephone conversation if, during that conversation, the caller decides to "annoy" or "offend" her partner in conversation by the use of a "dirty" word. For example, friends discussing politics in a friendly conversation may often violate this statute when they reach a point of disagreement and one uses a "dirty" word to "annoy" or "offend" the other. It is just that kind of speech that this Court held was protected in Keaton.
I agree that the state could prohibit non-consensual obscene calls made to a person's home with the specific intent to harass the person called. The statute before us, however, is much broader than this, and I question our authority to rewrite and limit the statute in this way.
KOGAN, J., concurs.