Ex Parte Tucker

• Decision Date: 31 March 1920
• Docket Number: (No. 3358.)
• Parties: Ex parte TUCKER.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

220 S.W. 75

Ex parte TUCKER.

(No. 3358.)

Supreme Court of Texas.

March 31, 1920.

Original application by George Tucker for writ of habeas corpus. Writ issued, and relator discharged.

Campbell, Greenwood & Barton, of Palestine, for applicant.

B. F. Dent, Dist. Atty., of Crockett, and Clay Cotten, Co. Atty., and Campbell & Sewell, all of Palestine, opposed.

PHILLIPS, C. J.

The District Court of Anderson County, in a suit of the Palestine Telephone Company against the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers' Department, Local No. 388 of Palestine, and other organizations, in Palestine, their officers and members, enjoined the defendants from, among other things, "vilifying, abusing, or using opprobrious epithets to or concerning any party or parties in the employment of plaintiff," and "from any and all conduct" toward such employees, or concerning them, "which might be calculated to provoke or inspire a breach of the peace."

The relator was an officer and member of one of the defendant organizations.

The plaintiff in the cause, later, filed an affidavit charging him with a violation of the injunction in having applied, in a conversation with one Duncan, slanderous epithets to the female telephone operators in its employ. The relator, on the hearing, denied having used the language charged or the making of any remark reflecting upon such employees, but the court found him guilty of the charge and adjudged him in contempt. It appears from the record here that the relator was indicted for slander for the use of the same language charged against him in the contempt proceedings.

The existence of any power in a court of equity to supervise one person's opinion of another, or to dictate what one person may say of another, is plainly and emphatically refuted by the 8th section of the Bill of Rights.

That section, in part, reads:

"Every person shall be at liberty to speak, write or publish his opinions on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege; and no law shall ever be passed curtailing the liberty of speech or of the press."

The purpose of this provision is to preserve what we call "liberty of speech" and "the freedom of the press," and at the same time hold all persons accountable to the law for the misuse of that liberty or freedom. Responsibility for the abuse of the privilege is as fully emphasized by its language as that the privilege itself shall be free from all species of restraint. But the abuse of the privilege, the provision commands, shall be dealt with in no other way. It is not to be remedied by denial of the right to speak, but only by appropriate penalties for what is wrongfully spoken. Punishment for the abuse of the right, not prevention of its exercise, is what the provision contemplates. There can be no liberty in the individual to speak, without the unhindered right to speak. It cannot co-exist with a power to compel his silence or fashion the form of his speech....