Court Opinion

ID: 9455120
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:11:50.905603+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:28.005672
License: Public Domain

DANAHER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
Notoriously, as the records in many cases coming here have disclosed, the 2700 block of 14th Street, N.W. is a prime trouble spot. As shown in the “Statement of Proceedings and Evidence” filed by the trial judge, the events occurred about 7:30 on a Saturday evening when the area was generally congested and sidewalks were crowded. Even slight incidents can and often do flare into disorder and riots, especially where the police assert some measure of authority in their effort to maintain a degree of public peace. Granted that some officers may be overzealous on occasion, a citizen is not without various remedies, indeed in this very case, a complaint to the police department was lodged against Officer Freto.
Perhaps the group including the appellant had not been obstructing pedes*650trian use of the sidewalk. Possibly the officer therefore should not have directed that they move. Yet instead of seeking peaceful redress because of such commands, the appellant openly flouted the officer. His truculence was made apparent in unmistakable terms when he told the officer “no son of a bitch” was going to make him move. Such an expression and others disclosing the appellant’s attitude, undoubtedly figured in efforts by his erstwhile companions and even his wife to persuade him that his position, if inflexible, was rash at the very least.1
Presumably untutored in the niceties of the law as some of my colleagues would read it, those who were right there at the scene realized that the appellant’s conduct might occasion a breach of the peace.
So in retrospect it seemed to the prosecutor who charged that the appellant had used certain language “under circumstances such that a breach of the peace may be occasioned thereby.” So it seemed to the trial judge who after finding the appellant guilty, had prepared for use on appeal his “Statement of Proceedings and Evidence.” 2 So it seemed to a majority of the sitting division who first heard argument on the issue.3
I think the conviction should stand4 for the appellant’s “fighting words” were not a “permissible response” as the Supreme Court put it in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 573, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942). This is especially true, in my assessment as our sitting division’s opinion had it, because the information and the trial judge’s “Statement” described the appellant’s words as uttered “under circumstances such that a breach of peace may be occasioned.” That was the basis for the conviction, quite correctly entered I submit.5
I am authorized to state that Senior Circuit Judge WILBUR K. MILLER and Circuit Judge TAMM concur in this dissent.

. And the defense at trial attempted to refute and clearly understood the nature of and the basis for the charge upon which conviction was entered.

. I fail to understand the reason for the implication, twice repeated, that the trial judge’s “Statement” is here subject to impeachment or rejection because “written up some four and a half months” after the trial. The judge may have had far more copious notes than we take, indeed some trial judges even utilize shorthand.

. With the contention of the appellant himself so read and so related to the saving breach of the peace element, I am not concerned that counsel for the District urged varying grounds to predicate affirmance.

. The statement by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals of an incorrect reason for the right result does not invalidate its judgment.

. Contrast the record here with that in Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 310, 60 S.Ct. 900, 906, 84 L.Ed. 1213 (1940) where Mr. Justice Roberts found there had been no “threatening of bodily harm, no truculent bearing, no intentional discourtesy, no personal abuse,” and on that account, he there discerned no present menace to public peace and order. I thus range myself with the analysis of such cases as Cantwell and Chaplinshy as submitted by Mr. Justice Jackson, dissenting, in Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 at 26 and 27, 69 S.Ct. 894, 93 L. Ed. 1131 (1949).