Pringle v. Court of Common Pleas

• Decision Date: 12 December 1985
• Docket Number: No. 85-5249,85-5249
• Citation: 778 F.2d 998
• Parties: Paula PRINGLE, Appellant, v. COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, Cumberland County, Pa. and Edgar Bayley, District Attorney of Cumberland County, Pa. and Leroy Zimmerman, Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Penna.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

Page 998

778 F.2d 998

Paula PRINGLE, Appellant, v. COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, Cumberland County, Pa. and Edgar

Bayley, District Attorney of Cumberland County,

Pa. and Leroy Zimmerman, Attorney

General of the Commonwealth of Penna.

No. 85-5249.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued Oct. 18, 1985.

Decided Dec. 12, 1985.

Thomas M. Place (Argued), Carlisle, Pa., for appellant.

Leroy S. Zimmerman, Atty. Gen., Kate L. Mershimer (Argued), Deputy Atty. Gen., Andrew S. Gordon, Sr. Deputy Atty. Gen., Allen C. Warshaw, Chief Deputy Atty. Gen., Harrisburg, Pa., for Leroy S. Zimmerman.

Eric M. Noonan (Argued), Asst. Dist. Atty., Cumberland County, Carlisle, Pa., for Court of Common Pleas and Edgar Bayley.

Before ADAMS, Acting Chief Judge, HUNTER, Circuit Judge, and FISHER, District Judge ^*.

OPINION OF THE COURT

PER CURIAM.

In a habeas corpus petition, appellant challenges her conviction in state court for violation of Pennsylvania's disorderly conduct statute. She argues that the conviction, based solely on her offensive speech addressed to police officers, was an abridgement of her due process and First Amendment rights. We find that her due process contention is controlled by Supreme Court precedent, and on that ground alone will reverse the district court and order that the writ of habeas corpus be issued.

I.

On October 1, 1979, appellant Paula Pringle, then seventeen years old, was arrested by the Shippensburg police and charged with one count of disorderly conduct through use of obscene language. 18 Pa.Cons.Stat.Ann. Sec. 5503(a)(3). ¹ The charge arose from Pringle's actions on the night of September 28, 1979. At 10:40 p.m. that night, four police officers were in the process of arresting Tony Neil on a public street; Neil was resisting violently. A crowd of 30 to 50 people gathered, including Pringle, a friend of Neil's. Pringle moved through the crowd, shouting several times, "goddamn fucking pigs," and "fucking pig, let him go."

Pringle had no previous record with the Shippensburg police. At trial before the Court of Common Pleas, she testified that she did not remember her exact language, but recalled being upset because she saw police officers kicking Neil and hitting him with a flashlight while he lay handcuffed on the ground.

The district magistrate found Pringle guilty and fined her $100. On appeal, a bench trial was held de novo in the Court of Common Pleas; the defendant was found guilty and sentenced to 10 to 30 days in prison. The Superior Court affirmed, deciding that the state statute met constitutional requirements, and that Pringle's speech was obscene, constituted "fighting words" and accordingly was unprotected by the First Amendment. Commonwealth v. Pringle, 304 Pa.Super. 67, 450 A.2d 103 (1982). The state Supreme Court denied allocatur.

Pringle filed a petition in federal district court for habeas corpus relief. The district court initially dismissed the petition, since at the time Pringle filed it a separate appeal of her sentence was pending in state court. This Court reversed, Pringle v. Court of Common Pleas, 744 F.2d 297 (3d Cir.1984), and on remand the district court addressed Pringle's constitutional claims. 604 F.Supp. 623 (M.D.Pa.1985). ² The court upheld the validity of the statute, and held that Pringle's speech was unprotected, relying solely on the fighting words doctrine. It therefore denied the requested relief.

Appellant now asserts various constitutional claims before this Court. She insists that the Commonwealth's disorderly conduct statute is overbroad and impermissibly vague, and therefore must be invalidated as an abridgement of First Amendment and due process rights. She also contends that even if there were a valid statutory basis for her conviction, her speech was constitutionally protected and the conviction infringed her First Amendment rights. Because we decide that the statute was vague at the time Pringle acted and was charged in 1979, and the charge and conviction therefore violated essential requirements of due process, we will not address her other constitutional claims.

II.

Pringle contends that the statutory bar on "obscene" words employed to create a public disturbance was unduly vague. We note initially that Sec. 5503(a)(1), which expressly prohibits "threatening" in public, apparently precludes the use by a citizen of "fighting words." While Pringle may very well have been guilty of uttering "fighting words," see Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571, 62 S.Ct. 766, 768, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942), we are unable to consider that possibility since she was charged only under Sec. 5503(a)(3) and not (a)(1). We therefore address our attention to the former provision.

The Supreme Court explained the rationales for and the purpose of the vagueness principle in Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972):

It is a basic principle of due process that an enactment is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined. Vague laws offend several important values. First, because we assume that man is free to steer between lawful and unlawful conduct, we insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Vague laws may trap the innocent by not providing a fair warning. Second, if arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is to be prevented, laws must provide explicit standards for those who apply them. A vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy matters to policemen, judges, and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application. Third, but related, where a vague statute "abut[s] upon sensitive areas of basic First Amendment freedoms," it "operates to inhibit the exercise of [those] freedoms." Uncertain meanings inevitably lead citizens to " 'steer far wider of the unlawful zone' ... than if the boundaries of the forbidden areas were clearly marked."

Id. at 107-08, 92 S.Ct. at 2298-99 (footnotes omitted) (quoting Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 372, 84 S.Ct. 1316, 1322, 12 L.Ed.2d 377 (1964); Cramp v. Board of Public Instruction, 368 U.S. 278, 287, 82 S.Ct. 275, 280, 7 L.Ed.2d 285 (1961)).

More recently, in Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 358, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 1858, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983), the Supreme Court recognized that the need to provide sufficient guidance to law enforcement officials is the more important practical rationale for the doctrine. The assumption that even the most reasonable citizens are aware of the precise legal consequences of their actions is often based upon a fiction. Nevertheless, there is a constitutional mandate to legislatures to define criminal conduct carefully and specifically and thereby control the actions of those who apply the power of the state. The concept that "reasonable" persons should be aware of criminal prohibitions is therefore a standard used primarily to prevent legislatures from granting excessive decision-making authority to public officials.

In this matter, the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the highest state court to pass on the issue, determined that the statute's proscription of "obscene" speech was not overly vague. Recognizing that for purposes of a constitutional challenge a court "must take the statute as though it read precisely as the highest court of the State has interpreted it," Wainwright v. Stone, 414 U.S. 21, 22-23, 94 S.Ct. 190, 192, 38 L.Ed.2d 179 (1973) (per curiam) (quoting Minnesota ex rel. Pearson v. Probate Court, 309 U.S. 270, 273, 60 S.Ct. 523, 525, 84 L.Ed. 744 (1940)), and reasonable persons are assumed to be aware of such constructions, the Superior Court determined that the statute had been limited properly by a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision. In that case, Commonwealth v. Mastrangelo, 489 Pa. 254, 414 A.2d 54, appeal dismissed, 449 U.S. 894, 101 S.Ct. 259, 66 L.Ed.2d 124 (1980), the court ruled that a different subsection of the Pennsylvania disorderly conduct statute applied only to speech unprotected by the First Amendment. ³ 3] However, we disagree with the Superior Court's contention that the construction by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ends appellant's due process claim. Even if Mastrangelo saves the entire statute from infirmity for vagueness, an issue we do not address or resolve today, it is irrelevant in a case such as this that arose before Mastrangelo was decided.

The first focus of a vagueness analysis must be on the statute as it existed at the time the defendant acted and was charged with commission of a crime. An individual's right to fair notice of criminally proscribed behavior and to uniform application of legal authority is implicated initially at that time. That is the teaching of Rabe v. Washington, 405 U.S. 313, 92 S.Ct. 993, 31 L.Ed.2d 258 (1972) (per curiam), a case that involved a legal problem substantially similar to that presented in this matter. ⁴

In Rabe, a drive-in theatre manager was arrested and convicted under a state statute prohibiting knowing possession or exhibition of an "obscene" motion picture. In affirming the conviction, the state supreme court did not hold that the film was obscene under then-applicable federal precedent; rather, it found the material obscene in "the context of its exhibition," referring to the drive-in presentation. Id. at 315, 92 S.Ct. at 994 (emphasis in original). The United States Supreme Court struck down the conviction as an abridgement of due process, stressing that "[t]he statute, so construed, is impermissibly vague as applied to petitioner because of its failure to give him fair notice that criminal liability is dependent upon the place where the film is shown." 405 U.S. at 315-16, 92 S.Ct. at 994 (emphasis added). The emphasized language demonstrates that the Supreme Court found it unnecessary to consider whether the statute remained vague or otherwise...