Lamar v. Banks

• Decision Date: 26 August 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-7347,81-7347
• Parties: Joseph LAMAR, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Fred BANKS, Warden, Gwinnett County Correctional Institute, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 714

684 F.2d 714

Joseph LAMAR, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Fred BANKS, Warden, Gwinnett County Correctional Institute Respondent-Appellee.

No. 81-7347.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Aug. 26, 1982.

J. M. Raffauf, Decatur, Ga., for petitioner-appellant.

Bryant Huff, Dist. Atty., Michael C. Clark, Asst. Dist. Atty., Lawrenceville, Ga., for respondent-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before FAY, VANCE and ARNOLD ^*, Circuit Judges.

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner Joseph Lamar appeals the denial by the District Court of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He alleges, among other things, that the Georgia "fighting words" statute under which he was charged and convicted, Ga.Code § 26-2610(a), is unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to the petitioner. We hold that the statute is not invalid on its face, but reverse and remand for an evidentiary hearing on Lamar's contention that the statute is unconstitutional as applied to his case.

I.

On the morning of October 1, 1979, petitioner, a taxicab driver, picked up a passenger at the Atlanta airport. The passenger, a female college student, asked to be taken to Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. ¹ Instead of taking the young woman to her requested destination, petitioner drove to an area of the city unfamiliar to his passenger and tried to seduce her. During the course of propositioning the young woman, petitioner made the statement to her that "I bet your honey doesn't have the nine and one-half inch penis I have." ² He also held the woman's hand and insisted that she give him her address and telephone number. The student was able to persuade petitioner to release her by giving a fictitious address as her residence at Agnes Scott College.

As a result of making the comment quoted above to the young woman, petitioner was charged with violating Ga.Code § 26-2610(a), a misdemeanor. ³ He was convicted on January 29, 1980, after a non-jury trial in the State Court of DeKalb County, Georgia, and sentenced to the maximum of one year in prison. The testimony at the trial was neither taken down nor transcribed. ⁴ Petitioner was represented by counsel at his trial.

Petitioner then filed a petition for habeas corpus in the Superior Court of Gwinnett County, Georgia, the court having jurisdiction over the person of respondent, his custodian. ⁵ Lamar claimed that his conviction was invalid for essentially the same reasons as he now urges in support of his petition for federal habeas corpus. Counsel attempted to present testimony "to show ... what context is the words that are charged in the ... accusation, and in what context the words were used," R. 190, but the State objected "to re-trying the case at this time," ibid., and the objection was sustained. R. 191. The state habeas hearing consisted largely of argument of counsel, and promptly after the hearing the Superior Court denied the petition on its merits in a written opinion. Lamar v. Banks, Civil Action No. 80-A-681 (Super.Ct. Gwinnett County, Ga., May 2, 1980). Application for a certificate of probable cause to appeal was denied by the Supreme Court of Georgia without opinion, Hill, J., dissenting. Lamar v. Banks, App. No. 1258 (Ga. July 16, 1980). There is thus no question that state remedies have been fully exhausted.

Petitioner filed this federal habeas petition on May 7, 1980, and the case was referred to a magistrate for consideration. His motion for release on bond pending consideration of his petition was granted by the District Court. ⁶ Petitioner requested an evidentiary hearing, but none was held. On March 19, 1981, the magistrate issued his report, recommending that petitioner be denied habeas corpus relief. Petitioner then filed objections to the magistrate's report and recommendation, again requesting an evidentiary hearing, but the District Court, after a review of the magistrate's findings, adopted the report as its own opinion and order. Petitioner now appeals this decision.

II.

Petitioner first attacks the constitutionality of Ga.Code § 26-2610(a) and contends that the statute is invalid on its face. ⁷ Petitioner argues that § 26-2610 as a whole and § 26-2610(a), specifically, have not been limited to "fighting words" and thus may encompass forms of protected speech. It is clearly apparent, however, that the petitioner was charged with violating only subsection (a) of the statute. The criminal warrant for his arrest makes a specific reference to § 26-2610(a), and the prosecutor's accusation uses such identifying language ⁸ that there can be no mistake as to which subsection of the statute petitioner was charged with violating. Petitioner's constitutional challenge must therefore stand or fall on the validity of subsection (a).

Because § 26-2610(a) punishes only spoken words, it can withstand a challenge to "its facial constitutionality only if, as authoritatively construed by the Georgia courts, it is not susceptible of application to speech, although vulgar or offensive, that is protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments (citations omitted)." Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518, 520, 92 S.Ct. 1103, 1105, 31 L.Ed.2d 408 (1972). Petitioner argues that the Georgia state courts have rendered conflicting decisions on the applicability of the statute and that, for this reason, § 26-2610(a) should be declared unconstitutional, as was the statute's predecessor in Gooding v. Wilson, supra. The Supreme Court in Gooding found that Georgia appellate courts had not construed former Ga.Code § 26-6303 ⁹ "so as to avoid all constitutional difficulties." Id. at 528, 92 S.Ct. at 1109 (citing United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs, 402 U.S. 363, 369, 91 S.Ct. 1400, 1404, 28 L.Ed.2d 822 (1971)). Because the state courts had "applied § 26-6303 to utterances where there was no likelihood that the person addressed would make an immediate violent response," the Supreme Court held the statute unconstitutionally vague and overbroad under the rule of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942). Id. at 528, 92 S.Ct. at 1109.

Petitioner cites a number of Georgia appellate decisions as evidence of the inconsistency of the state courts' application of Ga.Code § 26-2610, which was adopted in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Gooding. His argument would have some force if all of the cases cited involved subsection (a) of § 26-2610; however, many of the decisions concern defendants who were charged with violating subsection (b) of the statute. ¹⁰ In addition, the cases cited that do involve alleged violations of § 26-2610(a) are not supportive of petitioner's contention. Application of subsection (a) was specifically limited to "fighting words" by the Georgia appellate courts in Bolden v. State, 148 Ga.App. 315, 251 S.E.2d 165 (1978), and Allen v. State, 137 Ga.App. 21, 222 S.E.2d 856 (1975), where convictions under the statute were upheld. Reversing a conviction, the court in Rozier v. State, 140 Ga.App. 356, 231 S.E.2d 131 (1976), held that a remark made by a young man to a 16-year-old female did not constitute "fighting words." ¹¹ These decisions indicate that Georgia appellate courts have construed § 26-2610(a) to be limited to words that "have a direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the person to whom, individually, the remark is addressed." Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, supra, 315 U.S. at 573, 62 S.Ct. at 770. Because the statute's words do no more than state the Chaplinsky and Gooding standard, and because the appellate courts of Georgia have not permitted it to be more broadly applied, petitioner's challenge to the facial constitutionality of the statute must fail. ¹²

Petitioner also suggests, citing Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 91 S.Ct. 1780, 29 L.Ed.2d 284 (1971), that no one can be validly convicted for using "fighting words" unless the hearer was actually aroused to violence, or the speaker intended such a result. Obviously petitioner did not intend to provoke his passenger to violence. He had quite another object in mind. And it is undisputed that she did not in fact react violently, perhaps because she was afraid, certainly in part because she showed uncommon coolness, resourcefulness, and presence of mind in very frightening circumstances. Section 26-2610(a) has not been interpreted to require either that the defendant intend to provoke violence, or that the addressee actually react violently. See Bolden v. State, supra, 148 Ga.App. at 316, 251 S.E.2d at 166. Therefore, if petitioner's reading of Cohen is correct, § 26-2610(a) would proscribe some protected speech, as well as speech that is unprotected because it is within the exception for "fighting words."

We disagree with this reading of Cohen. First of all, it makes no sense for a defendant's criminality to depend on the actual reaction of the hearer of the accused words. Under the rule proposed, if the young woman had struck Lamar, or struck at him, he would be validly convicted, but because she had the prudence to restrain herself, his words would be constitutionally protected. ¹³ It is the tendency or likelihood of the words to provoke violent reaction that is the touchstone of the Chaplinsky test, not whether in a given case violence was desired by the speaker or actually occurred. It is true that the Supreme Court's opinion in Cohen contains the observation that "(t)here is ... no showing that anyone who saw Cohen was in fact violently aroused or that appellant intended such a result." 403 U.S. at 20, 91 S.Ct. at 1785. But this single sentence cannot bear the weight petitioner seeks to rest upon it. We do not read the Court's opinion to say that the State of California could not use the fighting-words doctrine to support its prosecution of Cohen unless it proved either that he intended to provoke violence or that someone did become violent. A reading of...