Court Opinion

ID: 9589796
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:48:45.323374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:34.320283
License: Public Domain

Poff, J.,
dissenting.
I dissent. The judgment should be reversed and final judgment should be entered for the defendant. In my view, the statute should be construed not to apply to this defendant under these circumstances. Construed otherwise, the statute offends the First Amendment.
As the parties agree and the majority recognize, there is utterly no evidence of record showing a “clear and present danger”. The majority simply conclude that the General Assembly concluded that there was a danger so clear and present as to justify a statutory abridgement of the right to publish. The majority reach their conclusion unaided by legislative history and without benefit of a declaration of such danger in the statute or the Constitution which mandates the statute. Just as a court cannot infer the existence of a clear and present danger from allegations made in a contempt citation and adopt that inference as a conclusion of law, Wood v. Georgia, 370 U.S. 375 (1962), a court cannot infer the existence of a clear and present danger from the mere enactment of a penal statute.
If a restriction upon publication of lawfully-acquired information concerning the proceedings of a commission reviewing charges against a judicial officer can be constitutionally justified by a simple conclusion that publication poses a clear and present danger to the administration of justice, a similar conclusion could justify a similar restriction with reference to the proceedings of a Commission reviewing charges against an executive officer or a legislator.
I simply believe that, in order to justify a statutory exception to the constitutional guarantee, there must be an evidentiary showing of a clear and present danger to a legitimate governmental interest, and an evidentiary showing that the *714statutory sanction is the minimum necessary to meet that danger and protect that interest. The legal presumption is in favor of the First Amendment and against the exception, and legal presumptions survive until rebutted by evidence.