City of Kansas City v. Thorpe

• Decision Date: 10 September 1973
• Docket Number: No. 2,No. 56424,56424,2
• Citation: 499 S.W.2d 454
• Parties: CITY OF KANSAS CITY, Missouri, Respondent, v. Kenneth THORPE, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 454

499 S.W.2d 454

CITY OF KANSAS CITY, Missouri, Respondent, v. Kenneth THORPE, Appellant.

No. 56424.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

Sept. 10, 1973.

Motion for Rehearing or to Transfer to Court en Bank Denied

Oct. 8, 1973.

Aaron A. Wilson, City Counselor, Louis W. Benecke, City Pros., William S. Ferguson, Jr., Asst. City Pros., Kansas City, for respondent.

Richard J. Habiger, The Legal Aid and Defender Society of Greater Kansas City, Kansas City, for appellant; James L. Muller, Kansas City, of counsel.

FRANK D. CONNETT, Jr., Special Judge.

The defendant had been charged with the violation of Section 26.10(c) of the Ordinances of the City of Kansas City Missouri, which is as follows:

'Any person who, with intent to provoke a breach of the peace or whereby a breach of the peace may be occasioned, commits any of the following acts shall be deemed to have committed the offense of disorderly conduct: . . . (c) Congregates with others on a public street and refuses to move on when ordered by the police.'

During the first two weeks of September in 1970, there were many fights between groups of black and white students in the vicinity of East High School in Kansas City, Missouri. During this time, Kansas City police had been patrolling the area and trying to keep peace by keeping the school children moving as they left the school so as to prevent them from congregating in groups. On September 18, 1970, at about 3:30 in the afternoon, about 150 whites had gathered at 20th and Van Brunt Streets and about 25 to 40 blacks had gathered at 20th and Denver. The police officers arrested five students just as school let out and waited on the street for the paddy wagon to arrive. When it arrived a group congregated around them. After placing the five in the paddy wagon, the officers directed the group to move on. When all of them failed to move on, Officer Baker directly requested one young girl to move on, and when she failed to do so, he arrested her and started to put her in the police car. The defendant arrived on the scene at this time. He recognized the girl as a friend of a friend. When the officer attempted to put this gril in the police car, the defendant came up to the other side of the open car door, within six to eight inches of the officer, and began to tell him he could not arrest the girl and that she had not done anything. The officer told him to move on, but he continued to stand there and tell the officer he could not arrest the girl. There were 25 to 40 people there at this time. Officer Baker then arrested the defendant. While in the process of placing him in the paddy wagon, the girl escaped. The defendant's version of this episode is substantially the same, except that he and his witnesses testified that Officer Baker never told the defendant to move on. The case was tried to the court on appeal from the municipal court, and the judge found the order to move on was given and the defendant was guilty and he was fined the sum of twenty dollars.

Appellant-defendant first contends on appeal that this ordinance under which he was convicted is invalid and unconstitutional under the due process clauses of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution and Section 10 of Article 1 of the Missouri Constitution, V.A.M.S., 1945, because: (A) It is vague in that proper notice is not provided to the public as to what activity is prohibited or required and fails to provide standards by which a judge or jury might determine guilt; (B) it is overly broad in that it unconstitutionally infringes, abridges and restricts defendant's right to freedom of speech, right to peaceably assumble and right to freedom of association.

Since this appeal involves the construction of the Constitution of the United States and of this state, jurisdiction is in this court. Article V, Section 3 of the Missouri Constitution.

It is apparent from a reading of the ordinance, supra, that it conveys a sufficiently defined warning as to the proscribed conduct when measured by common understanding and practices within the guidelines for determining whether a statute or ordinance is unconstitutionally vague as set out in State v. Crawford, 478 S.W.2d 314 (Mo.1972). However, if the term 'breach of the peace' is so broad as to include constitutionally protected rights, then it is unconstitutional.

Defendant has cited many cases from the United States Supreme Court and other federal courts supporting his proposition that vague and overly broad laws are unconstitutional. Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536, 85 S.Ct. 453, 13 L.Ed.2d 471 (1965), concerned a state statute almost identical to the Kansas City ordinance now in question, except that the offense was denominated in the Louisiana statute as disturbing the peace and in the Kansas City ordinance it is denominated as disorderly conduct. Both prohibit congregating on public streets with intent to provoke a breach of the peace and refusal to move on when so ordered by the police. The court in the Cox case held that although the second part of the statute, i.e., refusal to move on at the request of the police officer was narrow and specific, the first part 'with intent to cause a breach of the peace' was not; and thus the statute was unconstitutionally vague and overly broad because it swept within its broad scope activities that are constitutionally protected free speech and assembly.

From this case and others cited below we have determined that any statute or ordinance providing for punishment for a breach of the peace is unconstitutionally broad and vague if by its terms a person could be punished for exercising his right to freedom of speech and assembly as protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Terminello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 69 S.Ct. 894, 93 L.Ed. 1131 (1949); Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229, 83 S.Ct. 680, 9 L.Ed.2d 697 (1963); Ashton v. Kentucky, 384 U.S. 195, 86 S.Ct. 1407, 16 L.Ed.2d 469 (1966); Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518, 92 S.Ct. 1103, 31 L.Ed.2d 408 (1972). Further, it is irrelevant whether or not defendant's actions were in the exercise of a constitutionally protected right if the law by which he was prosecuted could be interpreted so as to prohibit the exercise of a constitutionally protected right. The law still must be stricken. Gooding v. Wilson, supra, at page 521, 92 S.Ct. 1103; Coates v. City of Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, 91 S.Ct. 1686, 29 L.Ed.2d 214 (1971). However, if the law is narrow and limited in its terms to action or speech which is not constitutionally protected, it is not overly broad and vague and in violation of the Constitution. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942).

Whether such a statute or ordinance is overly broad or sufficiently narrow depends upon the definition of the term 'breach of the peace' by the appellate court of the appropriate state. Thus, in Cox v. Louisiana, supra, 379 U.S. at page 551, 85 S.Ct. at page 462, the court found that the Louisiana Supreme Court had 'defined the term 'breach of the peace' as 'to agitate, to arouse from a state of repose, to molest, to interrupt, to hinder, to disquiet. '' The court went on to note that in Edwards v. South Carolina, supra, the 'defendants had been convicted of a commonlaw crime similarly defined by the South Carolina Supreme Court. Both definitions would allow persons to be punished merely for peacefully expressing unpopular views.' Ashton v. Kentucky, supra, was a conviction for criminal libel, which had been defined by the trial court 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 Supreme Court found that since no Kentucky case had defined this crime in understandable terms it was unconstitutionally broad and vague. In Terminello v. Chicago, supra, the defendant Terminello was convicted for an utterance as a breach of the peace, defined by the trial court 'if it stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest, or creates a disturbance, or if it molests the inhabitants in the enjoyment of peace and quiet by arousing alarm.' Although no exception was made to the trial court's instruction, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction because the ordinance as construed by the trial court invaded the province of freedom of speech. In Gooding v. Wilson, supra, a Georgia conviction for using to or of another and in his presence opprobrious words or abusive language tending to cause a breach of the peace was overturned because the term 'breach of the peace' had not been narrowly defined by the Georgia courts. While in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, supra, in construing the phrase 'calculated to provoke a breach of the peace' contained in the ordinance in question, the Supreme Court found that the phrase had been construed by the New Hampshire Supreme Court to be limited to so-called 'fighting words.'

The term 'breach of the peace,' not having been defined in the Kansas City ordinance in question, we look to the decisions of the appellate courts in this state to see how the term has been defined. If it has been too broadly defined, then the ordinance must fall. However, if it has been narrowly defined, and thus not vague and indefinite and it does not impinge on constitutionally protected rights, it shall stand. Unfortunately, neither party has provided us with any assistance on this vital point. Defendant apparently assumed that breach of the peace in Missouri meant the same as it did in Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Chicago and Kentucky, according to the cases cited above. The city contended that such laws as the ordinance in question are a proper exercise of the police power to maintain public order. And so they may be, but only if they do not infringe upon constitutionally...