Court Opinion

ID: 9716275
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:33:03.380938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:43.335025
License: Public Domain

SHIELDS, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the majority decision to the extent that it holds IC 35-45-1-3(2) (1988) is not overbroad. As the majority recognizes, a state court interpretation of a statute is authoritative for purposes of constitutional analysis and our appellate courts have consistently restricted the phrase, unreasonable noise, to those categories of speech delineated by our supreme court in Hess v. Indiana (1973), 260 Ind. 427, 297 N.E.2d 413; rev'd by Hess v. Indiana (1973), 414 U.S. 105, 94 S.Ct. 326, 38 L.Ed.2d 303, in addressing the vagueness and overbreadth challenges brought in that case. These categories include fighting words, speech inciting imminent lawless ac*117tion, public nuisance speech, and obscene speech.1
I concur in the majority decision to the extent that it holds the statute in question is not unconstitutionally vague following the majority trend which holds that an "unreasonable noise" provision which is construed to prohibit only unprotected speech, as is the statute in question, is not unconstitutionally vague.
I fully concur in the majority's resolution of the Indiana constitutional challenge and in its determination that the evidence is sufficient to sustain Price's convictions.

. In discussing the overbreadth argument, the majority suggests with confidence that the legislature modeled IC 35-45-1-3(2) after a provision of the Model Penal Code although, out of constitutional concerns, it omitted the "offensively coarse" language. I suggest with equal confidence that whatever the source of our statute, the Legislature did not intend to decriminalize obscene speech. Nor did it. Noise is sound of any kind; spoken obscenities are as unreasonable as are the other categories of noise which the majority agrees constitutes unreasonable noise.
Also, in its third footnote, the majority assumes IC 35-45-1-3(2) would be unconstitutional if it were to be construed more broadly than its predecessor statute was construed by our supreme court in Hess Neither the United States Supreme Court nor our supreme court has made such a pronouncement.