Opinion ID: 106967
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the breach of the peace conviction.

Text: Appellant was convicted of violating a Louisiana disturbing the peace statute, which provides: Whoever with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, or under circumstances such that a breach of the peace may be occasioned thereby . . . crowds or congregates with others . . . in or upon . . . a public street or public highway, or upon a public sidewalk, or any other public place or building . . . and who fails or refuses to disperse and move on . . . when ordered so to do by any law enforcement officer of any municipality, or parish, in which such act or acts are committed, or by any law enforcement officer of the state of Louisiana, or any other authorized person . . . shall be guilty of disturbing the peace. La. Rev. Stat. § 14:103.1 (Cum. Supp. 1962). It is clear to us that on the facts of this case, which are strikingly similar to those present in Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U. S. 229, and Fields v. South Carolina, 375 U. S. 44, Louisiana infringed appellant's rights of free speech and free assembly by convicting him under this statute. As in Edwards, we do not find it necessary to pass upon appellant's contention that there was a complete absence of evidence so that his conviction deprived him of liberty without due process of law. Cf. Thompson v. Louisville, 362 U. S. 199. We hold that Louisiana may not constitutionally punish appellant under this statute for engaging in the type of conduct which this record reveals, and also that the statute as authoritatively interpreted by the Louisiana Supreme Court is unconstitutionally broad in scope. The Louisiana courts have held that appellant's conduct constituted a breach of the peace under state law, and, as in Edwards, we may accept their decision as binding upon us to that extent, Edwards v. South Carolina, supra, at 235; but our independent examination of the record, which we are required to make, [8] shows no conduct which the State had a right to prohibit as a breach of the peace. Appellant led a group of young college students who wished to protest segregation and discrimination against Negroes and the arrest of 23 fellow students. They assembled peaceably at the State Capitol building and marched to the courthouse where they sang, prayed and listened to a speech. A reading of the record reveals agreement on the part of the State's witnesses that Cox had the demonstration very well controlled, and until the end of Cox's speech, the group was perfectly orderly. Sheriff Clemmons testified that the crowd's activities were not objectionable before that time. They became objectionable, according to the Sheriff himself, when Cox, concluding his speech, urged the students to go uptown and sit in at lunch counters. The Sheriff testified that the sole aspect of the program to which he objected was [t]he inflammatory manner in which he [Cox] addressed that crowd and told them to go on up town, go to four places on the protest list, sit down and if they don't feed you, sit there for one hour. Yet this part of Cox's speech obviously did not deprive the demonstration of its protected character under the Constitution as free speech and assembly. See Edwards v. South Carolina, supra ; Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296; Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88; Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U. S. 157, 185 (concurring opinion of MR. JUSTICE HARLAN). The State argues, however, that while the demonstrators started out to be orderly, the loud cheering and clapping by the students in response to the singing from the jail converted the peaceful assembly into a riotous one. [9] The record, however, does not support this assertion. It is true that the students, in response to the singing of their fellows who were in custody, cheered and applauded. However, the meeting was an outdoor meeting and a key state witness testified that while the singing was loud, it was not disorderly. There is, moreover, no indication that the mood of the students was ever hostile, aggressive, or unfriendly. Our conclusion that the entire meeting from the beginning until its dispersal by tear gas was orderly [10] and not riotous is confirmed by a film of the events taken by a television news photographer, which was offered in evidence as a state exhibit. We have viewed the film, and it reveals that the students, though they undoubtedly cheered and clapped, were well-behaved throughout. My Brother BLACK, concurring in this opinion and dissenting in No. 49, post, agrees that the record does not show boisterous or violent conduct or indecent language on the part of the . . . students. Post, at 583. The singing and cheering do not seem to us to differ significantly from the constitutionally protected activity of the demonstrators in Edwards, [11] who loudly sang while stamping their feet and clapping their hands. Edwards v. South Carolina, supra, at 233. [12] Our conclusion that the record does not support the contention that the students' cheering, clapping and singing constituted a breach of the peace is confirmed by the fact that these were not relied on as a basis for conviction by the trial judge, who, rather, stated as his reason for convicting Cox of disturbing the peace that [i]t must be recognized to be inherently dangerous and a breach of the peace to bring 1,500 people, colored people, down in the predominantly white business district in the City of Baton Rouge and congregate across the street from the courthouse and sing songs as described to me by the defendant as the CORE national anthem carrying lines such as `black and white together' and to urge those 1,500 people to descend upon our lunch counters and sit there until they are served. That has to be an inherent breach of the peace, and our statute 14:103.1 has made it so. Finally, the State contends that the conviction should be sustained because of fear expressed by some of the state witnesses that violence was about to erupt because of the demonstration. It is virtually undisputed, however, that the students themselves were not violent and threatened no violence. The fear of violence seems to have been based upon the reaction of the group of white citizens looking on from across the street. One state witness testified that he felt the situation was getting out of hand as on the courthouse side of St. Louis Street were small knots or groups of white citizens who were muttering words, who seemed a little bit agitated. A police officer stated that the reaction of the white crowd was not violent, but was rumblings. Others felt the atmosphere became tense because of mutterings, grumbling, and jeering from the white group. There is no indication, however, that any member of the white group threatened violence. And this small crowd estimated at between 100 and 300 was separated from the students by seventy-five to eighty armed policemen, including every available shift of the City Police, the Sheriff's Office in full complement, and additional help from the State Police, along with a fire truck and the Fire Department. As Inspector Trigg testified, they could have handled the crowd. This situation, like that in Edwards, is a far cry from the situation in Feiner v. New York, 340 U. S. 315. See Edwards v. South Carolina, supra, at 236. Nor is there any evidence here of fighting words. See Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568. Here again, as in Edwards, this evidence showed no more than that the opinions which . . . [the students] were peaceably expressing were sufficiently opposed to the views of the majority of the community to attract a crowd and necessitate police protection. Edwards v. South Carolina, supra, at 237. Conceding this was so, the compelling answer . . . is that constitutional rights may not be denied simply because of hostility to their assertion or exercise. Watson v. Memphis, 373 U. S. 526, 535. There is an additional reason why this conviction cannot be sustained. The statute at issue in this case, as authoritatively interpreted by the Louisiana Supreme Court, is unconstitutionally vague in its overly broad scope. The statutory crime consists of two elements: (1) congregating with others with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, or under circumstances such that a breach of the peace may be occasioned, and (2) a refusal to move on after having been ordered to do so by a law enforcement officer. While the second part of this offense is narrow and specific, the first element is not. The Louisiana Supreme Court in this case defined the term breach of the peace as to agitate, to arouse from a state of repose, to molest, to interrupt, to hinder, to disquiet. 244 La., at 1105, 156 So. 2d, at 455. In Edwards, defendants had been convicted of a common-law crime similarly defined by the South Carolina Supreme Court. Both definitions would allow persons to be punished merely for peacefully expressing unpopular views. Yet, a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech . . . is . . . protected against censorship or punishment . . . . There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view. For the alternative would lead to standardization of ideas either by legislatures, courts, or dominant political or community groups. Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U. S. 1, 4-5. In Terminiello convictions were not allowed to stand because the trial judge charged that speech of the defendants could be punished as a breach of the peace  `if it stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest, or creates a disturbance, or if it molests the inhabitants in the enjoyment of peace and quiet by arousing alarm.'  Id., at 3. The Louisiana statute, as interpreted by the Louisiana court, is at least as likely to allow conviction for innocent speech as was the charge of the trial judge in Terminiello. Therefore, as in Terminiello and Edwards the conviction under this statute must be reversed as the statute is unconstitutional in that it sweeps within its broad scope activities that are constitutionally protected free speech and assembly. Maintenance of the opportunity for free political discussion is a basic tenet of our constitutional democracy. As Chief Justice Hughes stated in Stromberg v. California, 283 U. S. 359, 369: A statute which upon its face, and as authoritatively construed, is so vague and indefinite as to permit the punishment of the fair use of this opportunity is repugnant to the guaranty of liberty contained in the Fourteenth Amendment. For all these reasons we hold that appellant's freedoms of speech and assembly, secured to him by the First Amendment, as applied to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, were denied by his conviction for disturbing the peace. The conviction on this charge cannot stand.