Court Opinion

ID: 9757501
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:43:49.6269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:40.085607
License: Public Domain

COX, District Judge
(specially concurring) :
This class action involves forty-eight persons who were being prosecuted for the violation of § 2318.5 Mississippi Code 1942, captioned: “Picketing which interferes with ingress and egress to and from public buildings, premises, streets and sidewalks.” The body of the act makes it unlawful “for any person, singularly or in concert with others, to engage *880in picketing or mass demonstrations in such a manner as to obstruct or unreasonably interfere with free ingress or egress to- and from any public premise, State property, county or municipal ■courthouses, city halls, office buildings, jails or other public buildings or property owned by the State of Mississippi, ■or any county or municipal government located therein, or with the transaction -of public business or administration of justice therein or thereon conducted or so as to obstruct or unreasonably interfere with free use of public streets, sidewalks or other public ways adjacent or ■contiguous thereto [etc.].” These plaintiffs were charged in the state court in the language of the statute with obstructing the sidewalks adjacent to the county ■courthouse building of Forrest County, Mississippi and with blocking the entrances to such building by walking along such narrow walks so close together as to violate this statute. The plaintiffs’ lawyers say that this statute is vulnerable to the “void for vagueness” doctrine. Significantly, not one of the plaintiffs elected to testify that he could not reasonably understand that his conduct was proscribed by that act. It must be and is conclusively presumed that if such had been the facts that at least ■one of the plaintiffs would have so testified. This statute is attended by one of "the strongest known presumptions as to its validity. These plaintiffs well understood that which was proscribed thereby and defiantly persisted in ignoring the request of the sheriff that they desist from walking so close together and that "they picket in a lawful fashion. A statute will not be invalidated as vague simply because difficulty is found in determining whether certain marginal offenses fall within .their language. United States v. National Dairy Products Corporation, 372 U.S. 29, 83 S.Ct. 594, 9 L.Ed.2d 561. In Jordan v. DeGeorge, 341 U.S. 223, 71 S.Ct. 703, 95 L.Ed. 886, this vagueness doctrine was applied to the words “moral turpitude” involved in "the Immigration Act of 1917 [8 U.S.C.A. § 155 (a) ]. The Court said “ [i] mpossible standards of specificity are not required. United States v. Petrillo, 1947, 332 U.S. 1, 67 S.Ct. 1538, 91 L.Ed. 1877. The test is whether the language conveys sufficiently definite warning as to the proscribed conduct when measured by common understanding and practices. Connally v. General Construction Company, 1926, 269 U.S. 385, 46 S.Ct. 126, 70 L.Ed. 322.” That was not a criminal statute but the penalty involved was deportation or banishment from the country and the Court applied such doctrine thereto and approved said enactment. In Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. United States, 342 U.S. 337, 72 S.Ct. 329, 330, 96 L.Ed. 367, it is said: “A criminal statute must be sufficiently definite to give notice of the required conduct to one who would avoid its penalties, and to guide the judge in its application and the lawyer in defending one charged with its violation. But few words possess the precision of mathematical symbols, most statutes must deal with untold and unforeseen variations in factual situations, and the practical necessities of discharging the business of government inevitably limit the specificity with which legislators can spell out prohibitions. Consequently, no more than a reasonable degree of certainty can be demanded. Nor is it unfair to require that one who deliberately goes perilously close to an area of proscribed conduct shall take the risk that he may cross the line.”
In Roth v. United States of America, 354 U.S. 476, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498, there was involved the question as to the vagueness or not of the Federal Obscenity Statute appearing as 18 U.S. C.A. § 1461. In affirming a conviction, the Court said that many decisions recognize that the terms of obscenity statutes are not precise but said that lack of precision is not itself offensive to the requirements of due process; further saying: * * [T]he Constitution does not require impossible standards’; all that is required is that the language ‘conveys sufficiently definite warning as to the proscribed conduct when measured *881by common understanding and practices * * United States v. Petrillo, 332 U.S. 1, 7-8, 67 S.Ct. 1538, 1542, 91 L.Ed. 1877 [supra]. These words, applied according to the proper standard for judging obscenity, already discussed, give adequate warning of the conduct proscribed and mark ‘ * * * boundaries sufficiently distinct for judges and juries fairly to administer the law * * That there may be marginal cases in which it is difficult to determine the side of the line on which a particular fact situation falls is no sufficient reason to hold the language too ambiguous to define a criminal offense,” citing many cases.
There is nothing in this act or in its enforcement in this case which even remotely relates to impinging upon any First Amendment rights of these plaintiffs. Nobody doubted or questioned or denied the right of these plaintiffs to walk or march or demonstrate as they wished with banners containing protestations of their own choice. But this statute simply made picketing unlawful even for such purpose if it blocked the entrances and impeded or prevented the public its right of ingress and egress to such public building. That is all that is involved in this case. Judge Coleman has properly and correctly answered the questions directed by the Supreme Court of the United States to this Court on its remand of this case; and I concur in that opinion in its entirety.