Court Opinion

ID: 9690164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:55:34.878833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:53.871603
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Justice,
concurring specially.
I concur in the result. I need cite no authority for the proposition that the First Amendment protects unsavory expression as well as approbatory expression. That protection extends to the expression in this case which seems to be as much, if not more so, sexist in its content and intent as it is contemptuous of police authority. It also extends to offensive deportment by those whom we expect to exhibit better judgment.
I did not participate in this Court’s decision in Bismarck v. Nassif, 449 N.W.2d 789 (N.D.1989), and I write separately to express my understanding that neither in that decision nor in the majority opinion have we adopted a position which holds that police officers are to be singled out as the focus of protestors’ contempt. Although the fact the person at whom epithets are directed is a police officer may be considered in determining whether or not the words are “fighting words” unprotected by the First Amendment, I do not concede it is the only factor or the controlling factor. Because of the authority we vest in police officers we may have the right to expect them to exercise restraint. But we do not pay them enough to expect they will quash, if they could, all the same human reactions that other people have.
Because the term “inflicts injury” was used without further explanation in the challenged jury instructions, I agree we must reverse the conviction. Ordinarily that would result in a remand for a new trial. The majority concludes, apparently as a matter of law, that given the evidence in the record the defendant’s language and conduct would not constitute “fighting words” tending to incite an immediate breach of the peace. However, I have observed from experience that following an appeal, the evidence on retrial is not always identical to that of the first trial. Furthermore, the majority opinion tends to cast the witnesses as “Joe Cools,” i.e., impossible to incite to a breach of the peace. I am not confident that the jury must accept their characterizations of their feelings any more than they would have to accept their claims that they were incited to an immediate breach of the peace.
Notwithstanding my misgivings, I reluctantly concur in the order for acquittal. *815My concurrence is influenced not by the admissions of the State’s witnesses that they were not incited to a breach of the peace but by the undisputed evidence which reveals that the defendant’s first remark was made while walking by the car and the subsequent remarks were made only after the officer followed the defendant in her police car. I concede the first remark alone, as offensive as it was, would, without more, not be sufficient to convict. Insofar as the further remarks were made after Officer Elhard followed Schoppert they could be characterized as provoked. There are times when absent any indications to the contrary, a single remark is best left to pass unchallenged. This was such a time.
GIERKE, J., concurs.