Connecticut Man Arrested For Writing Obscenity On Traffic Ticket Payment Form
from the when-free-speech-costs-quite-a-bit dept
As someone who uses obscene words the way most people use commas, I always take a special interest when cursing butts up against free speech rights. After all, I certainly don't want to live in a world where I can't call some obnoxious jerk a [removed by editor] or a [removed by editor]. Such acts are the spice of life. Yet not everyone agrees, such as when courts rule against fantasy stories as obscene, or when the American public is forced to endure a half-a-second glimpse of a single nipple-less breast. Even Christmas has been rendered unsafe for the holy masses. But in none of those cases was the purveyor of salty language directing it squarely towards those who could levy judgement against them.
That honor goes to Willian Barboza, who was issued a speeding ticket last year in the Catskills town of Liberty, and chose to send a bit of a message while mailing in his guilty-plea fine when he wrote "F@#$ your sh#*$y town b&$#@es." The court decided that Barboza's admittedly witless prose was worth rejecting his payment altogether and charging him for aggravated harrassment, a strange state law that says it's a violation when someone:
“Either (a) communicates with a person, anonymously or otherwise, by telephone, by telegraph, or by mail, or by transmitting or delivering any other form of written communication, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm …You can see the problem already. This is about as unconstitutional a law as you could possibly write, one which seems to think that the whole first amendment doesn't exist. Hell, if annoying someone anonymously via written communication was illegal everywhere, the courts would be full of a certain percentage of Techdirt commenters. That, fortunately, is not the case (you're welcome, trolls), which is why the NYCLU filed suit on behalf of Barboza for pain, suffering and humiliation. The courts, thankfully, listened.
A municipal judge on March 22, 2013 finally dismissed the charge against Barboza, stating that while his words were “crude, vulgar, inappropriate and clearly intended to annoy,” that the First Amendment protects Barboza’s speech.I don't believe the decision renders the law inactive, but it seems pretty clear that it is untenable in its own jurisdiction when judges are unwilling to rule for it. Whatever process it takes to get that clearly unconstitutional law off the books needs to begin immediately, or else Fallsburg might just be the shitty town Barboza alledges.
“No citation is necessary for this Court to determine that the language under the circumstances here, offensive as it is, is protected,” stated Town of Fallsburg Justice Ivan Kalter.
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Filed Under: arrests, free speech, obscenities, parking tickets, willian barboza
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Respect me or else laws always work out well...
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You have a good point. And unlike Barboza's letter, a traffic ticket isn't protected as free speech, but is instead a formal notice of due process issued by action of the state. I don't think it would work, but it is an interesting angle on a bad law.
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Annoyance or Alarm
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now wait a minute...
ie it wasn't 'swear', 'dirty' words at all, but nonsense words...
does someone get arrested for hate crimes/racism if they write "the n-word" ? ? ?
*IF* that was literally what he wrote, i don't see how they could prosecute in any way: THEY AREN'T WORDS...
fucked up world...
i have a strange compulsion to write them and tell them how fucked up i think they are...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Ah, I see what Mike did there. He's just collecting evidence to sue the heck out of the trolls! Evil!
Ahem. I have to take my hat off to this guy. I think if I cursed a police officer I'd be under intensive care in the hospital next day.
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Police procedure within policy
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Re: Police procedure within policy
S.W.A.T. team with body armor, automatic weapons, "less lethal" grenades and a post-driver-battering-ram is 21st century.
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So speeding tickets are illegal then?
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I'm annoyed by the president, can he be impeached for annoying me?
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Alarm or annoyance?
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http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Allege
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I've done this myself
If I'd known back then that I could be arrested for a serious crime for doing that, and if I were already having a bad day, I might just think that I should actually commit the crime I'm gonna be charged with anyway, thus feeling I got what I paid for, and hand deliver the corrected payment to the clerk's home address, which was probably listed in the phone book at the time. Where "probably" means "definitely". Not that I'd really do that, of course. That would be mean-spirited, like refusing to cash a speeding ticket payment.
But instead I just translated my insults into French and sent in the ticket again with more money. It was accepted that way.
A friend working at the city later asked the clerk's judge if the clerk's actions were warranted by my "creative writing" on the check. He told her "no, she should have just cashed it."
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Fucking assholes... I swear..
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Skin's too thin
My message to those who are so infatuated with being annoyed: if you can't take the annoyance, then find another line of work! This shit has gotten way too out of hand where if a judge/court/clerk is "annoyed," it turns into a major issue for them. SUCK IT UP and understand that for the most part, none of us give much of a shit that you're annoyed. Understand that the REST of us also get annoyed as PART OF OUR JOBS, and you just need to grow a set and take it.
Having to pay outrageous fines along with court costs is often annoying. Spare me the "don't do the crime, then" speech, as we all well know that traffic enforcement is selective at best, a rigged game at worst, and tickets are given out per quotas (or whatever bullshit word they like to subsitute for "quota."
/rant
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And the Constitution says the states can have their own laws.
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Thank f#*k for that! Restores my faith in the legal system.
If laws like this actually worked, we wouldn�t have spam.
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