Court Opinion

ID: 9856239
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:42:22.19186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:34:03.956573
License: Public Domain

PARKER, J.,
concurring in the result:
Defendants in their brief state two questions are involved:
“1. Is the ordinance, as applied in the instant case, an unconstitutional interference with the defendants’ rights to freedom of *197speech and peaceable assembly protected against State infringement under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 17, of the North Carolina State Constitution?
“2. Is the ordinance, as applied in the instant case, unconstitutionally vague in that it does not apprise these defendants nor the public generally of the offense prohibited by it?”
The entire argument in their brief of 39 pages is addressed to these two constitutional questions. Defendants incorporated in their brief a copy of Article III, section 18, of the ordinances of the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, which had not been introduced in evidence.
Chief Justice Hughes speaking for a unanimous Court said in Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 85 L. Ed. 1049, 133 A.L.R. 1396:
“Civil liberties, as guaranteed by the Constitution, imply the existence of an organized society maintaining public order without which liberty itself would be lost in the excesses of unrestrained abuses. The authority of a municipality to impose regulations in order to assure the safety and convenience of the people in the use of public highways has never been regarded as inconsistent with civil liberties but rather as one of the means of safeguarding the good order upon which they ultimately depend. The control of travel on the streets of cities is the most familiar illustration of this recognition of social need. Where a restriction of the use of highways in that relation is designed to promote the public convenience in the interest of all, it cannot be disregarded by the attempted exercise of some civil right which in other circumstances would be entitled to protection. One would not be justified in ignoring the familiar red traffic light because he thought it his religious duty to disobey the municipal command or sought by that means to direct public attention to an announcement of his opinions. As regulation of the use of the streets for parades and processions is a traditional exercise of control by local government, the question in a particular case is whether that control is exerted so as not to deny or unwarrantedly abridge the right of assembly and the opportunities for the communication of thought and the discussion of public questions immemorially associated with resort to public places.”
The Court said in Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U.S. 395, 97 L. Ed. 1105, 30 A.L.R. 2d 987:
“The principles of the First Amendment are not to be treated as a promise that everyone with opinions or beliefs to express *198may gather around him at any public place and at any time a group for discussion or instruction. It is a non sequitur to say that First Amendment rights may not be regulated because they hold a preferred position in the hierarchy of the constitutional guarantees of the incidents of freedom. This Court has never so held and indeed has definitely indicated the contrary. It has indicated approval of reasonable nondiscriminatory regulation by governmental authority that preserves peace, order and tranquility without deprivation of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech, press and the exercise of religion.”
Mr. Justice Holmes said for the Court in Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 63 L. Ed. 470, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater, and causing a panic.”
If lucid words mean what they unambiguously say, and if the Supreme Court of the United States adheres to what it said in the Cox and Poulos cases, the State and municipalities have authority to impose regulations in order to assure the safety and convenience of all the people in the use of their public streets and of their public highways, and defendants, and other persons like-minded, have no state or federal constitutional right of freedom of speech or of peaceable assembly for redress of grievances to wilfully sit down or squat down or lie prone on the public streets and public highways of this State, singing and shouting and clapping their hands, blocking and obstructing the convenience and safety of the people in the use of the public streets and public highways, and thereby create chaos, with the result that “liberty itself would be lost in the excesses of unrestrained abuses.” If it were otherwise, then defendants, and others like-minded, could wilfully sit down, squat down, or lie prone on the public highways and airstrips and railroad tracks of this nation, and paralyze the entire transportation system of the people of the United States.
The mistake of whoever is responsible for drafting the indictments here charging defendants in this case with a violation of a city ordinance which has no application is difficult to understand. Such mistake has cost the taxpayers money.
It is an essential of jurisdiction that a criminal offense shall be sufficiently charged in a warrant or indictment. S. v. Strickland, 243 N.C. 100, 89 S.E. 2d 781; S. v. Thorne, 238 N.C. 392, 78 S.E. 2d 140; S. v. Morgan, 226 N.C. 414, 38 S.E. 2d 166.
The majority opinion holds that the indictments here charge no criminal offense. Jeopardy attaches only when, inter alia, a defendant is tried upon a valid warrant or indictment. Consequently, it is settled *199law that a prosecution under an indictment that charges no criminal offense cannot bar a prosecution upon a subsequent valid indictment. S. v. Strickland, 246 N.C. 120, 97 S.E. 2d 450, cert. den. 355 U.S. 831, 2 L. Ed. 2d 43; S. v. Jernigan, 255 N.C. 732, 122 S.E. 2d 711; S. v. Scott, 237 N.C. 432, 75 S.E. 2d 154; S. v. Speller, 229 N.C. 67, 47 S.E. 2d 537; S. v. Beasley, 208 N.C. 318, 180 S.E. 598; 22 C.J.S., Criminal Law, § 246; Wharton’s Criminal Law and Procedure, Anderson, 1957, Vol. I, § 139; 15 Am. Jur., Criminal Law, § 374.