Court Opinion

ID: 9650158
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:26:02.362202+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:06.378782
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority holds that in determining whether “three or more persons are participating in a course of disorderly conduct . . .” under 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5502,1 police may *616include persons in the vicinity who are not themselves disorderly. It also holds that section 5502 may permit an arrest for refusal to disperse where at the time of the arrest the individual is alone and there is thus no risk of an unruly crowd. I dissent. The majority interprets section 5502 more broadly than its terms permit, relies on facts not of record and erroneously upholds an unconstitutionally vague statute. Because in my view the evidence is insufficient to show a violation of section 5502, when properly interpreted, and because the statute is unconstitutionally vague, I would reverse.
I
The record, when viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, Commonwealth v. Rose, 463 Pa. 264, 344 A.2d 824 (1975), reveals that Appellant was one of a group of twenty-five persons who congregated on a summer evening in a small public park in Quakerstown Borough, Bucks County. Certain members of this group were observed in the early evening drinking beer, throwing beer cans, blocking traffic, shouting “obscenities” and urinating in public. Appellant’s exact language is not quoted in the record. Further, there is no evidence that appellant himself engaged in any of these activities. In response to complaints from nearby residents, police ordered the group to disperse several times, but to no avail. At 10:45 p. m. one member of the group was arrested for allegedly urinating in the street and another for allegedly attempting to interfere with his arrest.
Later, after another order to disperse, two more members of the group, Joseph Frank and John Howard, were arrested, evidently on a charge of refusing to comply with the dispersal order. When Frank and Howard were in the police car, ready to be taken away, appellant approached the car stating that he wanted to speak to them. It is undisputed that police told appellant he would have to see Frank and Howard at the police station.
Appellant and several others went to the police station, where they were refused entry. Leonard then pounded on *617the doors; appellant shouted alleged “obscenities” and called the police officers “pigs.” The police arrested Leonard and ordered appellant, along with the onlookers, to disperse. Although the onlookers dispersed and the appellant remained alone, he was again ordered to disperse. The appellant backed slowly away and was arrested about 110 feet from the station.
II
Section 5502 was designed to provide police with an effective means of dealing with potentially volatile gatherings of people. If there is no gathering of three or more, the danger to which the statute is addressed simply is not present. Under the statute, police authority to disperse groups is contingent upon disorderly conduct in the same area of three or more individuals. It is clear that where less than three individuals are disorderly, the Legislature considered any apparent danger insufficient to justify a grant of police authority to issue a dispersal order.
The majority concludes that the “three or more persons” requirement of section 5502 could be fulfilled by appellant’s presence among the group congregated at the park after 10:45 p. m. (There is no evidence that appellant refused an order to disperse while at the park.) But section 5502 simply does not make one’s earlier presence in a group in which three or more persons may have been disorderly a justification for arrest at a later time at a different place and when less than three persons are disorderly. The statute applies only to groups which pose an existing threat. By permitting consideration of the circumstances at the park to support appellant’s conviction for refusing to disperse later and elsewhere, the majority transcends the statute.
Alternatively, the majority find the “three or more persons” element of section 5502 satisfied by the presence outside the police station of onlookers who dispersed upon command. In reaching this conclusion, it disregards the standards established by the Legislature and, in effect, permits a general order to disperse whenever there is one *618disorderly person in the vicinity of a group not claimed to be disorderly.
In a last effort to justify its determination that there were at least three participants in a disorderly course of conduct, the majority seeks to include those persons who were in custody in the police station, characterizing them as disorderly. Neither the Commonwealth in its brief nor the trial court in its opinion makes any mention of these circumstances. Moreover, it is unreasonable to assume that those who are in a police station in police custody can be included for purposes of the dispersal statute here at issue.
Finally, the statute plainly does not authorize an arrest for disobeying an order to disperse when, at the time of the arrest, there is no group of people in the vicinity. The clear purpose of section 5502 is to permit dispersal of potentially unruly groups which are then in existence. If there is no group, the dangers addressed by the statute are not raised.
In the above respects, I believe the majority has erred in its statutory interpretation. Thus, based on what I view to be the proper interpretation of section 5502, I find the evidence insufficient to support appellant’s conviction.
Ill
The majority has not only erred in its statutory interpretation, it has in addition erroneously rejected appellant’s claim that 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5502 is unconstitutionally vague in violation of the 1st and 14th amendments. In Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566, 94 S.Ct. 1242, 39 L.Ed.2d 605 (1975) (unconstitutional to bar “contemptuous” treatment of flag), the United States Supreme Court stated:
“The settled principles of [the doctrine of vagueness] require no extensive restatement here. The doctrine incorporates notions of fair notice or warning. Moreover, it requires legislatures to set reasonably clear guidelines for law enforcement officials and triers of fact in order to prevent ‘arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.’ Where a statute’s literal scope, unaided by a narrowing state court interpretation, is capable of reaching expres*619sion sheltered by the First Amendment, the doctrine demands a greater degree of specificity than in other contexts.”
Id., 415 U.S. at 572-73, 94 S.Ct. at 1247 (footnotes omitted).
In its constitutional analysis of 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5502 the majority relies on Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 1953, 32 L.Ed.2d 584 (1972). In Colten, one of a number of cars transporting college students from a political demonstration bore an expired license plate. The police stopped the car and made an arrest. The other cars pulled over and a crowd gathered on the highway at the scene of the arrest, thus creating a risk of accident. Colten was ordered to leave, but persisted in his efforts to speak with the arrestee. After five warnings the police arrested him and he was subsequently convicted of disorderly conduct.
Colten does not control the outcome in this case, however, because the Court held that Colten’s conduct was in no way protected by the first amendment.
“We have little doubt that Colten’s conduct in refusing to move on after being directed to do so was not, without more, protected by the First Amendment. ... He had no constitutional right to observe the issuance of a traffic ticket or to engage the issuing officer in conversation at that time.”
Id., 407 U.S. at 109, 92 S.Ct. at 1956-7.
Thus in Colten the Court held only that appellant should have reasonably known that his particular conduct was prohibited. The Court had no occasion to apply the more exacting standard of review appropriate where a statute reaches conduct protected under the first amendment. E.g., Smith v. Goguen, supra.
The right to speak and the right to be in a park for social purposes are in general within first amendment protection. See Coates v. City of Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, 613, 91 S.Ct. 1686, 29 L.Ed.2d 214 (1971).2 The majority, therefore, cannot deny that section 5502 regulates arguably protected *620conduct. On the majority’s reading of section 5502, appellant’s conviction is upheld on the basis of his speech and his activities in the park. Thus, under Smith v. Goguen, supra, the issue is whether, in view of the first amendment, the statute draws “reasonably clear lines” between what is criminal and what is not. Id., 415 U.S. at 574, 94 S.Ct. at 1248.
By prohibiting conduct which “causes or may reasonably be expected to cause . . . serious inconvenience, annoyance or alarm,” section 5502 provides to the public insufficient instruction of its scope and accordingly affords to police an undue discretion in ordering groups of persons to disperse. The definition of “disorderly conduct” contained in section 5503 fails to cure the vagueness of section 5502’s language. Section 5502 bars disorderly conduct which “causes or may reasonably be expected to cause . serious inconvenience, annoyance or alarm.” Section 5503 provides as follows:
“(a) Offense defined. — A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he:
*621(1) engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior;
(2) makes unreasonable noise;
(3) uses obscene language, or makes an obscene gesture; or
(4) creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.”
Each of the subsections must, of course, ultimately be viewed in combination with the vague “inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm” language. But even viewed alone, these subsections do not draw acceptably “clear” lines. I do not dispute that the first subsection clearly prohibits fighting. But it cannot be reasonably determined what other particular behavior the terms “threatening” or “tumultuous” subject to sanction. Thus, subsection (1) gives undue discretion to the police and inadequate notice to the public. Similarly, other subsections permit police to decide when a noise is “unreasonable,” when conduct or speech is “physically offensive” or what a “legitimate purpose of the actor” is. The public can only guess at the standard these terms imply and hence may be inclined to forego constitutionally protected conduct or speech.
The reference to “obscene language” and “obscene gesture^]” in subsection (3) presents a special problem. In Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 19-20, 91 S.Ct. 1780, 1785, 29 L.Ed.2d 284 (1971), the Court reversed a conviction for the display in a courthouse corridor of a four-letter expletive on the back of a jacket. The Court observed:
“this case cannot be said to fall within those relatively few categories of instances where prior decisions have established the power of government to deal more comprehensively with certain forms of individual expression simply upon a showing that such a form was employed. This is not, for example, an obscenity case. Whatever else may be necessary to give rise to the States’ broader power to prohibit obscene expression, such expression must be, in some significant way, erotic. Roth v. United States, 354 *622U.S. 476, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957). It cannot plausibly be maintained that this vulgar allusion to the Selective Service System would conjure up such psychic stimulation in anyone likely to be confronted with Cohen’s crudely defaced jacket.”
See State v. Anonymous, 34 Conn.Sup. 575, 377 A.2d 1342 (1977). Construed in this fashion, the subsection is not vague. But the majority, here, has not adopted the Cohen construction. Therefore, the public can only guess what the term “obscene” includes. In the present case the trial judge, in his charge (quoted in the majority opinion), permitted the jury to base its finding of disorderly conduct on the use of “bad language.” Appellant, then, was accused and convicted of nothing more than “bad language” and refusing to disperse. The majority’s approval of this “bad language” charge is wholly unwarranted, particularly where the record does not reveal what language is claimed to be obscene.
The judgment of sentence should be reversed because of 1) the majority’s erroneous interpretation of the statutory language, 2) the absence of a record to support the majority’s assumption of its asserted facts and 3) the majority’s erroneous holding that the statute is not vague.

. Act of December 6, 1972, P.L. 334, § 1.

. In Coates v. City of Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, 613, 91 S.Ct. 1686, 29 L.Ed.2d 214 (1971), the United States Supreme Court struck down a *620state statute making it a criminal offense for “three or more persons to assemble ... on any of the sidewalks . . . and thereby conduct themselves in a manner annoying to persons passing by.” In discussing the statute’s overbreadth, the Court observed:
“[T]he vice of the ordinance lies not alone in its violation of the due process standard of vagueness. The ordinance also violates the constitutional right of free assembly and association. Our decisions establish that mere public intolerance or animosity cannot be the basis for abridgment of these constitutional freedoms. . The First and Fourteenth Amendments do not permit a State to make criminal the exercise of the right of assembly simply because its exercise may be ‘annoying’ to some people. If this were not the rule, the right of the people to gather in public places for social or political purposes would be continually subject to summary suspension through the good-faith enforcement of a prohibition against annoying conduct. And such a prohibition, in addition, contains an obvious invitation to discriminatory enforcement against those whose association together is ‘annoying’ because their ideas, their lifestyle, or their physical appearance is resented by the majority of their fellow citizens.”
Id., 402 U.S. at 615-6, 91 S.Ct. at 1689 (footnotes omitted).