Court Opinion

ID: 9768953
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 13:59:21.880462+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:51.089091
License: Public Domain

Conley Byrd, Justice, dissenting. As I read Lewis v. City of New Orleans, 415 U.S. 130, 94 S. Ct. 970, 39 L. ed. 2d 214 (1973), Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518, 92 S. Ct. 1103, 31 L. ed. 2d 408 (1971) and Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S. Ct. 766, 86 L. ed. 1031 (1942), they hold that a statute punishing spoken words is overly broad and invalid when it can be applied to utterances other than those which “inflict injury or tend to invite an immediate breach of the peace.” Of course, our statute in addition to fighting words, as defined in Lewis v. City of New Orleans, supra, punishes the use of profane, violent, vulgar, abusive or insulting language which in its common acceptation is calculated to arouse to anger, Holmes v. State, 135 Ark. 187, 204 S.W. 846 (1918) and State v. Moser, 33 Ark. 140 (1878). As pointed out in Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 536, 85 S. Ct. 453, 13 L. ed. 471 (1965), speech that arouses or stirs people to anger is protected by the Constitution of the United States. Consequently, it appears to me that the one sentence opinion by the majority of the United States Supreme Court gave us a sufficient guide to determine the constitutionality of our statute, Ark. Stat. Ann. § 41-1412 (Repl. 1964), when it referred us to Lewis v. City of New Orleans, supra. For the reasons stated I would hold the statute invalid. George Rose Smith and Brown, JJ., join in this dissent.