Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/405/156/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 08:07:00+00:00

Document:
The Jacksonville vagrancy ordinance, under which petitioners were convicted, is void for vagueness, in that it "fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute," it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions, it makes criminal activities that, by modern standards, are normally innocent, and it places almost unfettered discretion in the hands of the police. Pp. 405 U. S. 161-171.
Of these four charged with "prowling by auto," none had been previously arrested except Papachristou, who had once been convicted of a municipal offense.
But "the theory of the Elizabethan poor laws no longer fits the facts," Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, 314 U. S. 174. The conditions which spawned these laws may be gone, but the archaic classifications remain.
This ordinance is void for vagueness, both in the sense that it "fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute," United States v. Harriss, 347 U. S. 612, 347 U. S. 617, and because it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions. Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88; Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U. S. 242.
schemes of vagrancy laws; and we assume they would have no understanding of their meaning and impact if they read them. Nor are they protected from being caught in the vagrancy net by the necessity of having a specific intent to commit an unlawful act. See Screws v. United States, 325 U. S. 91; Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. United States, supra.
"[P]ersons able to work but habitually living upon the earnings of their wives or minor children" -- like habitually living "without visible means of support" -- might implicate unemployed pillars of the community who have married rich wives.
"[P]ersons able to work but habitually living upon the earnings of their wives or minor children" may also embrace unemployed people out of the labor market, by reason of a recession [Footnote 5] or disemployed by reason of technological or so-called structural displacements.
Persons "wandering or strolling" from place to place have been extolled by Walt Whitman and Vachel Lindsay. [Footnote 6] The qualification "without any lawful purpose or object" may be a trap for innocent acts. Persons "neglecting all lawful business and habitually spending their time by frequenting . . . places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served" would literally embrace many members of golf clubs and city clubs.
"It would certainly be dangerous if the legislature could set a net large enough to catch all possible offenders, and leave it to the courts to step inside and say who could be rightfully detained, and who should be set at large."
United States v. Reese, 92 U. S. 214, 92 U. S. 221.
"Only a word needs to be said regarding Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U. S. 451. The case involved a New Jersey statute of the type that seek to control 'vagrancy.' These statutes are in a class by themselves, in view of the familiar abuses to which they are put. . . . Definiteness is designedly avoided so as to allow the net to be cast at large, to enable men to be caught who are vaguely undesirable in the eyes of police and prosecution, although not chargeable with any particular offense. In short, these 'vagrancy statutes' and laws against 'gangs' are not fenced in by the text of the statute or by the subject matter so as to give notice of conduct to be avoided."
Id. at 333 U. S. 540.
that appear to have no other immediate solution."
system. We allow our police to make arrests only on "probable cause," [Footnote 13] a Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment standard applicable to the States [Footnote 14] as well as to the Federal Government. Arresting a person on suspicion, like arresting a person for investigation, is foreign to our system, even when the arrest is for past criminality. Future criminality, however, is the common justification for the presence of vagrancy statutes. See Foote, supra, at 625. Florida has, indeed, construed her vagrancy statute "as necessary regulations," inter alia, "to deter vagabondage and prevent crimes." Johnson v. State, 202 So.2d 852; Smith v. State, 239 So.2d 250, 251.
"It would be in the highest degree unfortunate if, in any part of the country, those who are responsible for setting in motion the criminal law should entertain, connive at or coquette with the idea that, in a case where there is not enough evidence to charge the prisoner with an attempt to commit a crime, the prosecution may, nevertheless, on such insufficient evidence, succeed in obtaining and upholding a conviction under the Vagrancy Act, 1824."
"[I]f some carefree type of fellow is satisfied to work just so much, and no more, as will pay for one square meal, some wine, and a flophouse daily, but a court thinks this kind of living subhuman, the fellow can be forced to raise his sights or go to jail as a vagrant."
Crimes of General Obnoxiousness, Crimes of Displeasing Police Officers, and the Like, 3 Crim.L.Bull. 205, 226 (1967).
A presumption that people who might walk or loaf or loiter or stroll or frequent houses where liquor is sold, or who are supported by their wives or who look suspicious to the police are to become future criminals is too precarious for a rule of law. The implicit presumption in these generalized vagrancy standards -- that crime is being nipped in the bud -- is too extravagant to deserve extended treatment. Of course, vagrancy statutes are useful to the police. Of course, they are nets making easy the roundup of so-called undesirables. But the rule of law implies equality and justice in its application. Vagrancy laws of the Jacksonville type teach that the scales of justice are so tipped that even-handed administration of the law is not possible. The rule of law, evenly applied to minorities as well as majorities, to the poor as well as the rich, is the great mucilage that holds society together.
The Jacksonville ordinance cannot be squared with our constitutional standards, and is plainly unconstitutional.
"Rogues and vagabonds, or dissolute persons who go about begging; common gamblers, persons who use juggling or unlawful games or plays, common drunkards, common night walkers, thieves, pilferers or pickpockets, traders in stolen property, lewd, wanton and lascivious persons, keepers of gambling places, common railers and brawlers, persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object, habitual loafers, disorderly persons, persons neglecting all lawful business and habitually spending their time by frequenting houses of ill fame, gaming houses, or places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served, persons able to work but habitually living upon the earnings of their wives or minor children shall be deemed vagrants and, upon conviction in the Municipal Court shall be punished as provided for Class D offenses."
Class D offenses at the time of these arrests and convictions were punishable by 90 days' imprisonment, $500 fine, or both. Jacksonville Ordinance Code § 1-8 (1965). The maximum punishment has since been reduced to 75 days or $450. § 304.101 (1971). We are advised that that downward revision was made to avoid federal "right to counsel" decisions. The Fifth Circuit case extending right to counsel in misdemeanors where a fine of $500 or 90 days' imprisonment could be imposed is Harvey v. Mississippi, 340 F.2d 263 (1965).
We are advised that, at present, the Jacksonville vagrancy ordinance is § 330.107, and identical with the earlier one except that "juggling" has been eliminated.
Florida also has a vagrancy statute, Fla.Stat. § 856.02 (1965), which reads quite closely on the Jacksonville ordinance. Jacksonville Ordinance Code § 27-43 makes the commission of any Florida misdemeanor a Class D offense against the City of Jacksonville. In 1971, Florida made minor amendments to its statute. See Laws 1971, c. 71-132.
"All loitering, loafing, or idling on the streets and highways of a city, even though habitual, is not necessarily detrimental to the public welfare nor is it under all circumstances an interference with travel upon them. It may be and often is entirely innocuous. The statute draws no distinction between conduct that is calculated to harm and that which is essentially innocent."
Id. at 272, quoting Hawaii v. Anduha, 48 F.2d 171, 172. See also Smith v. Florida, post, p. 405 U. S. 172.
"loitering about any hotel, block, barroom, dramshop, gambling house or disorderly house, or wandering about the streets either by night or by day without any known lawful means of support, or without being able to give a satisfactory account of themselves"
has also been held void for "excessive broadness and vagueness" by the Florida Supreme Court, Headley v. Selkowitz, 171 So.2d 368, 370.
23 Edw. 3, c. 1 (1349); 25 Edw. 3, c. 1 (1350).
See 3 J. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England 203-206, 266-275; 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *169.
"The early Vagrancy Acts came into being under peculiar conditions utterly different to those of the present time. From the time of the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century till the middle of the 17th century, and indeed, although in diminishing degree, right down to the reform of the Poor Law in the first half of the 19th century, the roads of England were crowded with masterless men and their families, who had lost their former employment through a variety of causes, had no means of livelihood, and had taken to a vagrant life. The main causes were the gradual decay of the feudal system under which the labouring classes had been anchored to the soil, the economic slackening of the legal compulsion to work for fixed wages; the break up of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII, and the consequent disappearance of the religious orders which had previously administered a kind of 'public assistance' in the form of lodging, food and alms; and, lastly, the economic changes brought about by the Enclosure Acts. Some of these people were honest labourers who had fallen upon evil days, others were the 'wild rogues,' so common in Elizabethan times and literature, who had been born to a life of idleness and had no intention of following any other. It was they and their confederates who formed themselves into the notorious 'brotherhood of beggars' which flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries. They were a definite and serious menace to the community, and it was chiefly against them and their kind that the harsher provisions of the vagrancy laws of the period were directed."
And see Sherry, Vagrants, Rogues and Vagabonds -- Old Concepts in Need of Revision, 48 Calif.L.Rev. 557, 560-561 (1960); Note, The Vagrancy Concept Reconsidered: Problems and Abuses of Status Criminality, 37 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 102 (1962).
"Whatever may have been the notion then prevailing, we do not think that it will now be seriously contended that, because a person is without employment and without funds, he constitutes a 'moral pestilence.' Poverty and immorality are not synonymous."
"If I choose to take an evening walk to see if Andromeda has come up on schedule, I think I am entitled to look for the distant light of Almach and Mirach without finding myself staring into the blinding beam of a police flashlight."
"I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, -- who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived 'from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going a la Sainte Terre,' to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, 'There goes a Sainte Terrer,' a Saunterer, a Holy Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels."
For a discussion of the "void for vagueness" doctrine in the area of fundamental rights, see Note, The "Void For Vagueness" Doctrine in the Supreme Court, 109 U.Pa.L.Rev. 67, 104 et seq.; Amsterdam, Federal Constitutional Restrictions on the Punishment of Crimes of Status, Crimes of General Obnoxiousness, Crimes of Displeasing Police Officers, and the Like, 3 Crim.L.Bull. 205, 224 et seq. (1967).
See Edelman v. California, 344 U. S. 357, 344 U. S. 362 (Black, J., dissenting); Hicks v. District of Columbia, 383 U. S. 252 (DOUGLAS, J., dissenting); District of Columbia v. Hunt, 82 U.S.App.D.C. 159, 163 F.2d 833 (Judge Stephens writing for a majority of the Court of Appeals); Judge Rudkin for the court in Hawaii v. Anduha, 48 F.2d 171.
The opposing views are numerous: Ex parte Branch, 234 Mo. 466, 137 S.W. 886; H.R.Rep. No. 1248, 77th Cong., 1st Sess., 2; Perkins, The Vagrancy Concept, 9 Hastings L.J. 237 (1958); People v. Craig, 152 Cal. 42, 91 P. 997.
"The bill contains many provisions that constitute an improvement over existing law. Unfortunately, however, there are two provisions in the bill that appear objectionable."
"Section 1 of the bill contains a number of clauses defining a 'vagrant.' Clause 6 of this section would include within that category 'any able-bodied person who lives in idleness upon the wages, earnings, or property of any person having no legal obligation to support him.' This definition is so broadly and loosely drawn that, in many cases, it would make a vagrant of an adult daughter or son of a well to-do family who, though amply provided for and not guilty of any improper or unlawful conduct, has no occupation and is dependent upon parental support."
Under clause 9 of said section, "any person leading an idle life . . . and not giving a good account of himself" would incur guilt and liability to punishment unless he could prove, as required by section 2, that he has lawful means of support realized from a lawful occupation or source. What constitutes "leading an idle life" and "not giving a good account of oneself" is not indicated by the statute, but is left to the determination in the first place of a police officer, and eventually of a judge of the police court, subject to further review in proper cases. While this phraseology may be suitable for general purposes as a definition of a vagrant, it does not conform with accepted standards of legislative practice as a definition of a criminal offense. I am not willing to agree that a person without lawful means of support, temporarily or otherwise, should be subject to the risk of arrest and punishment under provisions as indefinite and uncertain in their meaning and application as those employed in this clause.
"It would hardly be a satisfactory answer to say that the sound judgment and decisions of the police and prosecuting officers must be trusted to invoke the law only in proper cases. The law itself should be so drawn as not to make it applicable to cases which obviously should not be comprised within its terms."
H.R.Doc. No. 392, 77th Cong., 1st Sess.
Thus, "prowling by auto," which formed the basis for the vagrancy arrests and convictions of four of the petitioners herein, is not even listed in the ordinance as a crime. But see Hanks v. State, 195 So.2d 49, 51, in which the Florida District Court of Appeal construed "wandering or strolling from place to place" as including travel by automobile.
"The 1922 code was a step in the direction of precision in definition of crime, but it was not a complete departure from the concept of punishment in accordance with the dictates of the social consciousness of the judge. Laying hold of an old tsarist code provision that had been in effect from 1864 to 1903 known by the term 'analogy,' the Soviet draftsmen inserted an article permitting a judge to consider the social danger of an individual even when he had committed no act defined as a crime in the specialized part of the code. He was to be guided by analogizing the dangerous act to some act defined as crime, but, at the outset, the analogies were not always apparent, as when a husband was executed for the sadistic murder of a wife, followed by dissection of her torso and shipment in a trunk to a remote railway station, the court arguing that the crime was analogous to banditry. At the time of this decision, the code permitted the death penalty for banditry, but not for murder without political motives or very serious social consequences."
"On the traditionally important subject of criminal law, Algeria is rejecting the flexibility introduced in the Soviet criminal code by the 'analogy' principle, as have the East-Central European and black African states."
Hazard, The Residue of Marxist Influence in Algeria, 9 Colum.J. of Transnat'l L.194, 224 (1970).
Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 333 U. S. 15-17.
Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U. S. 560.
On arrests for investigation, see Secret Detention by the Chicago Police, A Report by the American Civil Liberties Union (1959). The table below contains nationwide data on arrests for "vagrancy" and for "suspicion" in the three-year period 1968-1970.
* Reporting agencies represent population of: 1968 -- 145,306,000; 1969 -- 143,815,000; 1970 --151,604,000.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1968-1970.

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