Ashton v. Kentucky
Citation | 384 U.S. 195,86 S.Ct. 1407,16 L.Ed.2d 469 |
Decision Date | 16 May 1966 |
Docket Number | No. 619,619 |
Parties | Steve ASHTON, Petitioner, v. KENTUCKY |
Court | United States Supreme Court |
Ephraim London, New York City, for petitioner.
John Browning, Frankfort, Ky., for respondent.
Petitioner was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $3,000 for printing a pamphlet found to be prohibited by the common law of criminal libel in Kentucky. The Kentucky Court of Appeals, with three judges dissenting, affirmed petitioner's conviction. Ky., 405 S.W.2d 562. We granted certiorari (382 U.S. 971, 86 S.Ct. 537, 15 L.Ed.2d 464) and reverse.
Petitioner went to Hazard, Kentucky, in 1963, where a bitter labor dispute raged, to appeal for food, clothing and aid for unemployed miners. The challenged pamphlet, which had a limited circulation, stated concerning Sam L. Luttrell, Chief of Police of Hazard:
It said concerning Charles E. Combs, the Sheriff:
And it said respecting Mrs. W. P. Nolan, co-owner of the Hazard Herald:
'The town newspaper, the Hazard Herald, has hollered that
The indictment charged 'the offense of criminal libel' committed 'by publishing a false and malicious publication which tends to degrade or injure' the three named persons. The trial court charged that 'criminal libel is defined as any writing calculated to create disturbances of the peace, corrupt the public morals, or lead to any act, which, when done, is indictable.'
The court also charged that malice is 'an essential element of this offense' and falsity as well.
The Court of Appeals in affirming the judgment of conviction adopted a different definition of the offense of criminal libel from that given the jury by the trial court. It ruled that the element of breach of the peace was no longer a constitutional basis for imposing criminal liability. It held that the common-law crime of criminal libel in Kentucky is 'the publication of a defamatory statement about another which is false, with malice.'
We indicated in Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 382 U.S. 87, 86 S.Ct. 211, 15 L.Ed.2d 176, that where an accused is tried and convicted under a broad construction of an Act which would make it unconstitutional, the conviction cannot be sustained on appeal by a limiting construction which eliminates the unconstitutional features of the Act, as the trial took place under the unconstitutional construction of the Act. We think that principle applies here. Petitioner was tried and convicted according to the trial court's understanding of Kentucky law, which defined the offense as 'any writing calculated to create disturbances of the peace * * *.'
We agree with the dissenters in the Court of Appeals who stated that: '* * * since the English common law of criminal libel is inconsistent with constitutional provisions, and since no Kentucky case has redefined the crime in understandable terms, and since the law must be made on a case to case basis, the elements of the crime are so indefinite and uncertain that it should not be enforced as a penal offense in Kentucky.'
The case is close to Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213, involving a conviction of the common-law crime of inciting a breach of the peace. The accused was charged with having played in the hearing of Catholics in a public place a phonograph record attacking their religion and church. In reversing we said: Id., at 308, 60 S.Ct. at 905.
In Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 69 S.Ct. 894, 93 L.Ed. 1131, we held unconstitutional an ordinance which as construed punished an utterance as a breach of the peace 'if it stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest, or creates a disturbance.' Id., at 3, 69 S.Ct. at 895. We set aside the conviction, saying:
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United States v. Walker, Crim. A. No. 80-486.
...67 (1960). This same rule applies to "common law crimes" as well as statutorily defined offenses. See Ashton v. Kentucky, 384 U.S. 195, 86 S.Ct. 1407, 16 L.Ed.2d 469 (1966). See note 24, 24Whalen v. United States, 445 U.S. 684, 689 n.4, 100 S.Ct. 1432, 1437, n.4, 63 L.Ed.2d 715 (1980). In W......
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...or regulating conduct that is reachable by the police power, freedom of speech or of the press suffer.' (Ashton v. Kentucky (1966) 384 U.S. 195, 200, 86 S.Ct. 1407, 1410, 16 L.Ed.2d 469.) Moreover, the vagueness and subjectivity of present obscenity doctrine impose particularly severe burde......
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