Opinion ID: 1598169
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Impact Of Papachristou, et al.

Text: In retrospect, this Court was eminently correct in its approach to the statute, in both the Fuller and Magee decisions, in view of the then existing state of the law. So, too, was the learned trial judge in the instant case, in applying Fuller and Magee as the controlling Florida precedent. However, both Fuller and Magee were decided prior to the landmark companion cases of Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville [6] and Smith v. Florida, [7] decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on February 24, 1972, and in light of the expressions in those and other decisions, [8] I have concluded that the time is ripe for reconsideration of our position on the statute. Papachristou held that the Jacksonville vagrancy ordinance [9] was void for vagueness, both in the sense that it failed to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct was forbidden by the ordinance, [10] and because it encouraged arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions. [11] One month later, the Supreme Court indicated that Papachristou and Smith were not narrow decisions or aberrations, but rather were the current general approach to statutes of this genre. In Gooding v. Wilson, [12] a Georgia criminal statute, [13] punishing the use of abusive language tending to cause a breach of the peace, was held facially unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, where it was determined that the Georgia State Courts had not limited and construed the statute as applying only to fighting words. [14] It would thus appear that the underpinnings for this Court's position in both Fuller and Magee have been removed; reading the language of Section 877.03 in pari materia with that of the Jacksonville vagrancy ordinance and the Georgia statute, [15] and noting the strong condemnations of the latter two provisions by the Supreme Court of the United States, [16] it would appear that, as a result of the commands of Papachristou , Smith v. Florida, and Gooding v. Wilson, Section 877.03 can no longer pass constitutional muster. We should therefore hold Section 877.03, Florida Statutes, 1971, F.S.A., vague and overbroad, and unconstitutional on its face. [17]