Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham
| Decision Date | 23 October 1962 |
| Docket Number | 6 Div. 856 |
| Citation | 149 So.2d 921,42 Ala.App. 1 |
| Parties | Fred L. SHUTTLESWORTH v. CITY OF BIRMINGHAM. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Appeals |
Peter A. Hall and Orzell Billingsley, Jr., Birmingham, for appellant.
Wm. C. Walker, Birmingham, for appellee.
Shuttlesworth was found guilty under § 856 of the City Code of Birmingham for interfering with the chief of police in the latter's taking certain Freedom Riders into 'protective custody.'
Taking into protective custody we consider to mean the receiving of some one who places himself voluntarily under the protection of a peace officer.
Outside the bus station was a crowd of some 250 to 300 shouting for the police to give way, to let them take care of the Freedom Riders en route to Montgomery who, on the walkout of bus drivers, were stranded in Birmingham. The crowd was trying to press forward toward the bus loading platform. Streets were blocked--Nineteenth entirely; Seventh Avenue between Eighteenth and Nineteenth.
Shuttlesworth has argued to us that the chief of police was not in the discharge of any legal duty. Harris v. City of Tuscaloosa, 21 Ala.App. 392, 108 So. 768, does not apply here; nor are People v. Papp, 19 Misc.2d 331, 185 N.Y.S.2d 907, and White v. Edmunds [1790], Peake 123, in point.
This argument can avail the appellant nothing, because his conduct was also that prohibited by § 825 of the City Code which provides for the same degree of punishment as § 856, § 825 making it an offense against the City for any person to commit an assault. 1 Andersen v. United States, D.C.Mun.App., 132 A.2d 155; affirmed 253 F.2d 335. See Duncan v. Jones [1936], 1 K.B. 218.
The definition of assault is well known from the common law. In Kennedy v. State, 39 Ala.App. 676, 107 So.2d 913, we had occasion to consider some of the elements of resisting arrest.
There may be a species of resisting an officer without at the same time committing an assault. Cf. Dist. Col. v. Little, 339 U.S. 1, 70 S.Ct. 468, 94 L.Ed. 599; Innes v. Wylie [1844], 1 Car. & Kir. 257; Patterson v. City of Sylacauga, 40 Ala.App. 239, 111 So.2d 25. But under the wording of § 856 opposing or interfering or hindering are alternatives to resistance, so that it is our view that an assault is an offense included in § 856 in the alternative here pertinent.
1 Section 825 reads: 'Any person who commits an assault, or an assault and battery, upon another person, shall, on conviction, be punished as provided in ...
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Jackson v. City of Muscle Shoals
...of the United States Constitution. Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 376 U.S. 339, 84 S.Ct. 795, 11 L.Ed.2d 766, reversing 42 Ala.App. 1, 149 So.2d 921. It results that the proceedings below were void ab initio. In this posture the statute of limitations has long since run. Hence, a judg......
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Hopkins v. State
...does not conform to the indictment. See Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 376 U.S. 339, 84 S.Ct. 795, 11 L.Ed.2d 766, reversing 42 Ala.App. 1, 149 So.2d 921. In Cole, supra, we '* * * It is as much a violation of due process to send an accused to prison following conviction of a charge o......
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Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 6 Div. 857
...represent related litigation. Appellant's conviction under Section 856, supra, was affirmed by this court in Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 42 Ala.App. 1, 149 So.2d 921, certiorari denied 274 Ala. 613, 149 So.2d 923. However, that case was reversed by the Supreme Court of the United S......