Opinion ID: 2323921
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Failure to Obey a Lawful Order of a Police Officer

Text: Appellants were convicted of FTO for failing to comply with the order to stop their demonstration and disperse. The offense was proscribed by 18 DCMR § 2000.2 (2006), which states: No person shall fail or refuse to comply with any lawful order or direction of any police officer. . . invested by law with authority to direct, control, or regulate traffic. This section shall apply to pedestrians and to the operators of vehicles. Appellants argue that the order to disperse was not a lawful order, and that it violated their First Amendment rights, because the Park Police lacked legitimate grounds to revoke their permit to demonstrate. The trial court made no finding on the issue, possibly because it was of the view that even if [Captain McClain] mistakenly revoked the permit, that didn't give [the demonstrators] the right to refuse the instructions of the officers. We conclude the issue is dispositive, however. The lawfulness of the order is an element of the offense of FTO. It is the government's burden to prove that element beyond a reasonable doubt, not only to secure appellants' convictions, but also to establish that the police interference with appellants' First Amendment-protected activity was permissible. In the present case, the lawfulness of the order to disperse turns on whether the police decision to revoke the demonstration permit was lawful, for if the decision to revoke the permit was not lawful, the order to disperse contravened the terms of the permit and was in derogation of appellants' First Amendment rights. [9] The lawfulness of the police decision to revoke the permit turned on whether the demonstrators violated the NPS regulation that prohibited stationary signs and placards in the center portion of the White House sidewalk and required demonstrators carrying signs there to continue to move along the sidewalk. No other justification for revoking the demonstration permit has been suggested. Yet although the propriety of the revocation was in dispute, and the applicable regulation, 36 CFR § 7.96(g)(5)(viii), was identified at trial, the government presented no evidence whatsoever that this regulation was violated. In fact, there was no testimony that any of the demonstrators on the White House sidewalk had signs or placards at all. [10] Appellant McAlister questioned Lieutenant Beck about this, asking [W]ould you be able to testify how many of the people when the permit was revoked were holding signs? How many of us did you see holding signs? Lieutenant Beck answered, I don't know. And Officer Bellino, when asked to recount how the arrests came about, described the demonstrators as praying, singing, and holding candles; he said nothing about their having signs or placards. Thus, if anything, the evidence at trial tended to contradict the claim that the demonstrators violated 36 CFR § 7.96. Citing Karriem v. District of Columbia, [11] the government argues that the invalidity of the permit revocation by the police gave appellants no right to refuse to obey the police order to disperse. (The question, put more precisely, is whether the invalidity of the permit revocation precludes appellants' FTO convictions because it rendered the order to disperse illegal and an unjustified infringement on appellants' First Amendment rights.) But even setting aside the fact that Karriem was not a First Amendment case, the government misreads the decision. Mr. Karriem was charged with FTO for disobeying a police directive to move his vending stand because he had parked it in front of a No Parking sign. It later was established, as Karriem had claimed, that the sign was invalid because it had been erected without proper advance notice to the public. Nonetheless, this court stated, the sign's invalidity did not give [Karriem] the right to refuse to move when the police told him to do so. [12] The reason, though, was that [t]he sign appeared on its face to be a valid and proper sign, to be enforced as written; indeed, we said, [t]hat fact gave the police officers objective probable cause to arrest [Karriem] for committing a crime in their presence, regardless of whether or not the sign had been erected improperly. [13] In other words, the evidence in Karriem showed that the police order to move in that case was a lawful order because the facts known to the police appeared to justify it. Here, in contrast, the government failed to show that the order to disperse was lawful. The demonstrators were exercising their First Amendment rights under a valid permit, and there is no evidence that the facts known to the police appeared to justify their revocation of that permit and consequent order to disperse. The record does not show the police had any reason to believe the demonstrators had forfeited their rights by violating 36 CFR § 7.96 (or any other law or regulation). The government's dual failure at trial to prove an essential element of the offense and to present competent, admissible testimony . . . sufficient to show that the restriction on expressive activity was narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest [14] requires us to reverse appellants' FTO convictions. We do not know and thus can not say, whether the prosecution could have provided the requisite evidence to sustain the constitutional validity of these arrests and prosecutions. On this record we do know, and thus say, it did not.  [15]