State v. Pucket

• Decision Date: 16 May 2018
• Docket Number: A159813
• Citation: 291 Or.App. 771,422 P.3d 341
• Parties: STATE of Oregon, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Allen Wesley PUCKET, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Oregon Court of Appeals

291 Or.App. 771

422 P.3d 341

STATE of Oregon, Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.Allen Wesley PUCKET, Defendant-Appellant.

A159813

Court of Appeals of Oregon.

Submitted December 6, 2016.

May 16, 2018

Andrew S. Mathers filed the briefs for appellant.

Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General, and Carson L. Whitehead, Assistant Attorney General, filed the brief for respondent.

Before DeHoog, Presiding Judge, and Hadlock, Judge, and Aoyagi, Judge.

HADLOCK, J.

Defendant appeals from a judgment of conviction for second-degree disorderly conduct for recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, and alarm by making unreasonable noise. He assigns error to the trial court’s denial of his motion for judgment of acquittal, contending that the disorderly conduct statute, ORS 166.025(1)(b), violates both Article I, section 8, of the Oregon Constitution and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as applied to his expressive conduct.¹ We disagree and, accordingly, affirm.

In considering a trial court’s ruling on a motion for judgment of acquittal, we state the facts in the light most favorable to the state, reviewing "to determine whether a rational trier of fact * * * could have found the essential element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." State v. Cunningham , 320 Or. 47, 63, 880 P.2d 431 (1994), cert. den. , 514 U.S. 1005, 115 S.Ct. 1317, 131 L.Ed.2d 198 (1995).

Two days before defendant was arrested, Tillamook Police Sergeant Bomer, along with Officer Greiner, responded to a noise complaint and encountered defendant standing on the sidewalk in front of a Fred Meyer store using an "electrified" bullhorn to preach to passersby. Bomer read the disorderly conduct statute to defendant and explained to him that he could say what he wanted but that he would need to do so without using the bullhorn. Defendant expressed skepticism that the statute applied to his conduct. Bomer decided not to cite defendant at that time, and, as she and Greiner walked back to the patrol car, defendant resumed using the bullhorn.

Two days later, on Christmas Eve, defendant returned to the sidewalk in front of Fred Meyer with a second man and again used the bullhorn to preach. Greiner’s wife was visiting Fred Meyer and could hear defendant from inside her car, parked approximately 50 feet away, when she turned off her engine. Although she did not know what defendant was saying, she found him annoying and distracting, and she complained to her husband about the noise. Greiner and Officer Olson responded to the scene. In accordance with an instructional email that had been sent out to the department, the officers did not immediately approach defendant. Instead, Greiner made audio recordings from three positions located across Highway 101 from Fred Meyer and approximately 300 feet from defendant—the entrance to a hotel, the restaurant at that hotel, and a gas station. Although the recording does not provide a listener with a way to discern how others would have experienced the volume of defendant’s amplified speech at the time, people from each location testified at trial to having heard defendant from across the highway. Indeed, an employee of the hotel testified that she heard defendant from inside the hotel for "[t]he better part of [her] shift, which was eight hours." That hotel employee added that guests complained about defendant’s noise and that defendant was so loud that "it was hard to hear on the phone." An employee from the gas station also testified to hearing defendant over the station’s intercom system. A Fred Meyer employee testified that customers were complaining about defendant. The only witnesses who testified to understanding what defendant was saying were his pastor, who stopped nearby for a short period, and defendant’s wife, who could understand defendant only if she "was parked real close and [had her] window rolled down."

When Greiner and Olson contacted defendant, Olson noted that the bullhorn’s volume was set "fully up." Olson informed defendant that, while he was "okay to speak [his] mind," his volume was unreasonable. After some debate, Olson told defendant that Olson would be seizing the bullhorn and that, if defendant did not surrender the bullhorn, he would be arrested. The officers ultimately arrested defendant, who was charged with violating ORS 166.025 (1)(b) by "recklessly creat[ing] a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance and alarm by making unreasonable noise."²

At the close of the state’s case in the bench trial that followed, defendant moved for a judgment of acquittal. The court denied that motion. After making detailed findings of fact, the court determined that defendant had been arrested for making unreasonable noise rather than for the content of his speech, and it found defendant guilty of second-degree disorderly conduct.

On appeal, defendant argues that the trial court erred when it denied his motion for judgment of acquittal because the disorderly conduct statute, ORS 166.025(1)(b), violates Article I, section 8, and the First Amendment as applied to his conduct. The state argues that ORS 166.025 (1)(b) is constitutional as applied in this case.

We begin with the state constitutional analysis. The Oregon Supreme Court set forth a framework to address Article I, section 8, free expression issues in State v. Robertson , 293 Or. 402, 649 P.2d 569 (1982). That framework distinguishes "between laws that focus on the content of speech or writing and laws that focus on the pursuit or accomplishment of forbidden results ." State v. Plowman , 314 Or. 157, 164, 838 P.2d 558 (1992), cert. den. , 508 U.S. 974, 113 S.Ct. 2967, 125 L.Ed.2d 666 (1993) (emphasis in original). Content-focused laws sometimes are referred to as falling within "the first category of Robertson ." E.g. , State v. Babson , 355 Or. 383, 394, 326 P.3d 559 (2014). The Robertson court further divided laws focusing on forbidden results into laws that expressly prohibit expression in achieving those results (the second Robertson category) and those that do not refer to expression at all (the third Robertson category). Plowman , 314 Or. at 164, 838 P.2d 558. Laws focused on forbidden results that do not refer to expression—those in the third Robertson category—are facially constitutional and a defendant accused under such a statute "would be left to assert * * * that the statute could not constitutionally be applied to his particular words or other expression, not that it was drawn and enacted contrary to article I, section 8." Robertson , 293 Or. at 417, 649 P.2d 569. To determine whether a "category three" law violates Article I, section 8, as applied to particular conduct, "the court must examine how the law was applied to determine whether the application was directed at the content or the expressive nature of an individual’s activities, advanced legitimate state interests, and provided ample alternative opportunities to communicate the intended message." Babson , 355 Or. at 408, 326 P.3d 559.

We applied the Robertson framework to ORS 166.025(1)(b) in State v. Rich , 218 Or. App. 642, 180 P.3d 744 (2008), focusing on whether application of the statute was aimed at the content of the defendant’s speech. We interpreted the statute’s reference to "unreasonable noise," to the extent that it relates to noise caused by speech, "to refer only to its noncommunicative elements." Id. at 647, 180 P.3d 744. So construed, the statute prohibits only "noise that is ‘unreasonable’ in volume, duration, etc.," making ORS 166.025 (1)(b)"a classic time, place, or manner law." Id . As a result, we held that the statute fits in the third Robertson category—as a law focused on forbidden results, not referring to expression—and a defendant therefore can show that the enforcement of ORS 166.025(1)(b) against his or her speech violates Article I, section 8, only by showing that the enforcement is directed toward the speech’s content as opposed to its noncommunicative elements. Id . ; see also Hagel v. Portland State University , 226 Or. App. 174, 180, 203 P.3d 226, adh’d to as modified on recons. , 228 Or. App. 239, 206 P.3d 1219 (2009) (citing Rich for the proposition that "a disorderly conduct law that restricts an actor from causing public alarm through ‘unreasonable noise’ without referring to the communicative content of the noise" falls within the third Robertson category).

In short, Rich holds that an as-applied Article I, section 8, challenge to an "unreasonable noise" prosecution under ORS 166.025(1)(b) generally will fail if the defendant has been prosecuted based on the "noncommunicative elements" of his speech, such as volume, rather than on its content. Here, the record includes ample evidence that defendant was arrested and prosecuted for content-neutral reasons, that is, for amplifying his speech so loudly that it created "unreasonable noise" that recklessly created a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm. That evidence includes testimony that officers told defendant that he was free to speak his mind but could not use the bullhorn to make an unreasonable noise. In addition, multiple employees and customers from surrounding businesses complained about the noise defendant was making; nothing in the record suggests that their complaints were based on the content of defendant’s message. And officers testified that they arrested defendant because of the volume and duration of his noise; indeed, it is unclear from the record whether they or any witnesses other than defendant’s preacher and wife (and only when they were in close proximity to defendant) could even understand the specific content of what defendant was saying. Thus, the record supports the trial court’s ultimate finding that "Mr. Pucket was arrested for noise. He was not arrested for preaching." In other words, defendant’s prosecution was not "directed at the content or the expressive nature of [his] activities." Babson , 355 Or. at...