Court Opinion

ID: 9551004
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:46:32.765139+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:52.534660
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE CARRIGAN
specially concurring in Part II.
I respectfully concur with Part I of the majority opinion and in the result reached in Part II, but would prefer to reach the latter result by a more direct route.
*183In my view the conduct constituting the crime charged has no legitimate claim to First Amendment protection. It is plain, unadulterated obscenity intended to interfere with the victim’s right to be left alone while protecting the perpetrator behind the anonymity of the telephone.
There is no element of political expression to be shielded here, as was the case in Bolles v. People, 189 Colo. 394, 541 P.2d 80 (1975). There the communication addressed the abortion issue which was the subject of vigorous public debate, and the defendant made no attempt to hide his identity. It is not even claimed that any element of political expression is involved here.
Nor is freedom of the press — in any form — involved. At most the claim is that constitutional guarantees of free speech include the right anonymously to invade another’s privacy and disturb another’s mental tranquility with obscene phone calls. There is no such constitutional right. Obscenity “is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press.” Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 485, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1309, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498, 1507 (1957).
This case does not present the frequently encountered problem of drawing the line between what is obscene and what is not obscene. The utterances here were palpably obscene. Moreover, in the posture of this case, a motion to dismiss for facial unconstitutionality, the allegation of the information that the calls were obscene must be taken as true.
A civilized society has a right to protect its members against obscene assaults on privacy and peace of mind. The First Amendment simply does not apply, and therefore I perceive no point in the majority’s protracted discussion of it.