Court Opinion

ID: 9709864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:56:23.075945+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:52.204292
License: Public Domain

RUCKER, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part
I concur in parts II and III of the majority opinion. However, I respectfully dissent to part I because I am not convinced there is sufficient evidence to show that Johnson’s speech amounted to unreasonable noise. Indeed my review of the record convinces me that the volume of Johnson’s speech had nothing to do with his arrest and charge of disorderly conduct. Rather, it appears the arresting officer was irritated because Johnson argued with him and refused to quit talking when ordered to do so. The following direct examination of the officer is instructive:
Q. Okay. And after you arrived there did you speak with [Johnson] personally?
A. Yes I did.
Q. And what was said or what were his actions at that time?
A. At first ... I asked what the problem was and he just looked at me and shrugged. He was sitting there eating candy in a chair. I asked him again and then he got upset, arguing with me and his mother and the other officer. Then he said he wasn’t going to his classes he was supposed to be going to. And after that it was hard to talk about what was going on. I asked him to he quiet and he continued to argue with me and his mother. And I arrested him.
Q. Was he making any unreasonable noises?
A. He was making it impossible to talk about the situation.
R. at 145. After cross-examination the following testimony resumed on re-direct:
Q. Just to clarify. When you said that he became upset. What specifically was he doing?
A. His voice got loud. Not to the point where he was screaming, but he was speaking louder than everybody else. And again he kept talking and was ... they just couldn’t ask any other questions about what was going on due to what he was saying.
R. at 146.
Relying on Whittington v. State, 669 N.E.2d 1363, 1367 (1966) the majority has determined that Johnson’s manner of speaking was unreasonable because it disrupted a police investigation. In that case the defendant was present in his home when the police were summoned to investigate a report of domestic violence. Upon arrival, the officers encountered Whitting-ton, who had been drinking, along with his sister and the sister’s boyfriend. Paramedics had also arrived on the scene. While the officers were attempting to determine what had happened, an argument erupted between Whittington and the sister’s boyfriend. Whittington became “loud and boisterous” and when asked to settle down he persisted in “a very loud and *451angry manner.” Id. at 1366. The officers arrested Whittington for disorderly conduct and he was convicted as charged based on his loud speaking during the police investigation. Discussing the facts of the case as applied to the disorderly conduct statute, our supreme court observed:
Loud noise could be found unreasonable in a case like Whittington’s on a number of grounds. It could threaten the safety of injured parties by aggravating their trauma or by distracting the medical personnel tending them. Loud outbursts could agitate witnesses and disrupt police investigations. It could make coordination of investigations and medical treatment more difficult. Finally, loud noise can be quite annoying to others present at the scene.
Id. at 1367 (emphasis added). Although Whittington does seem to stand for the proposition that loud outbursts “can” disrupt police investigations, the proposition is fact sensitive. Stated differently, the facts in Whittington clearly show that the defendant’s speech was “loud and boisterous” and as a result the police were disrupted in their investigation. By contrast, in the case before us the record is clear that Johnson’s speech was neither loud nor boisterous, nor can it be characterized as an outburst. Just as importantly, I fail to see how Johnson’s manner of speaking disrupted a police investigation. The officers were called to the scene by Johnson’s mother because he had been arguing with her. There was no indication of violence, threat of violence, or that any other criminal activity had occurred or was about to occur. In essence there was nothing to investigate other than why a son had been arguing with his mother. Thus even assuming, as I do not, that Johnson’s manner of speaking constituted loud noise, the police presence in the Johnson home did not amount to an investigation anticipated by Whittington that loud noise could disrupt. I therefore dissent on this issue and would reverse the judgment of the trial court.