190 A.2d 502 | Conn. Super. Ct. | 1962
The four defendants were tried together in a trial to the court, and each was found guilty on a charge of disorderly conduct in violation of § 53-175 of the General Statutes, which provides: "Any person who, by offensive or disorderly conduct, annoys or interferes with any person in any place . . ., although such conduct may not amount to an assault and battery, shall be . . . [punished]." Two claims of error are pursued in this appeal: (1) that the facts as found do not as a matter of law constitute disorderly conduct; and (2) that the court erred "in concluding upon all the *338 evidence that the . . . [defendants were] guilty of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt."
The facts as shown by the record are short and simple. On February 8, 1962, the defendants Petty, Jackson and Ackerman, together with three unidentified persons, entered the common waiting room of the downtown office of Arthur T. Barbieri, Inc., a real estate firm, which shared office space with two lawyers and was located at 109 Church Street, in New Haven. Arthur T. Barbieri is the chairman of the Democratic town committee. Of the six persons who entered the waiting room, some sat on chairs, others on the floor. None of the six had any business or professional engagements with any of the occupants of the office suite. A business patron of Barbieri, upon leaving his private office, was obliged to climb over one or more of the "sit-ins" in order to get to the outside door. Upon instructions from Barbieri, his secretary summoned the police. William Doerrer, a detective of the New Haven police department, responded to the call. He found six people in the common waiting room; three were seated on chairs and three sat on the floor. He asked them to withdraw voluntarily because their conduct was disruptive of the business of the establishment. Three left of their own accord. Petty, Ackerman and Jackson remained. Again, Doerrer told them to leave. They refused. Their arrest for disorderly conduct followed. Jackson told Doerrer, in the presence of Ackerman and Petty, that he, Jackson, knew he "was wrong in performing a sit-in demonstration in an office," and added, "This thing had to be brought to a head." The evidence suggests, though not too clearly, that Petty, Ackerman and Jackson were staging a "sit-in" demonstration to protest against certain features of a local housing ordinance for which they blamed both major political parties, though the evidence is notably *339 silent as to the specific details of the "sit-in" program. On the same date, the defendant Moss and five unidentified persons entered the waiting room of Henry DeVita, a lawyer who, in partnership with another attorney under the firm name of DeVita and Melnick, also had offices at 109 Church Street, in New Haven. The six were seated in the waiting room for about an hour. There is nothing in the record to indicate or suggest that any of them were there for business purposes. Doerrer asked them to leave. Five left voluntarily. Only Moss remained. He was again requested to leave. He refused. His arrest followed.
In none of the cases did the defendants themselves testify or introduce any evidence in their defense.
Upon these facts, which were undisputed, the court concluded that the defendants entered the business premises without any semblance of right or purpose; that they interfered with the normal business procedure in effect in both offices; and that they were guilty of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt.
We are aware that the term "disorderly conduct" is not one of precise meaning. It has been variously defined in different jurisdictions and no definition is generally accepted which is of such precision that it may readily be determined whether particular conduct is or is not disorderly. See Hughes v.Georgia Power Co.,
Twice in the last two years, the United States Supreme Court has reversed state criminal convictions on due process grounds where the convictions were totally devoid of evidentiary support. Thompson
v. Louisville,
The second case, Garner v. Louisiana, supra, involved violations of a statute on disturbing the peace. The statute (La. Rev. Stat. §
Since the defendants in the present cases have been found guilty of "conduct allegedly having a particular effect on a particular occasion under particular circumstances, it becomes necessary to appraise that conduct and effect by the particularity of evidence adduced." Frankfurter, J., concurring in the judgment in Garner, supra, 176. This is not the case of a proprietor who invites trade in some parts of his establishment and restricts it in another. Ibid. And unlike public restaurants, which have become a part of the public life of our communities, private business offices are not affected with a public interest. See Douglas, J., concurring in Garner, supra, 183. It may be that "[t]here is a deep-seated pattern of segregation of the races in Louisiana"; id., 179; but this is not now and has never been our pattern. In Garner, the "petitioners were sitting at these counters, where they knew they would not be served, in order to demonstrate that their race was being segregated in dining facilities in this part of the country." Harlan, J.,
concurring in the judgment, at 201. "Such a demonstration," Mr. Justice Harlan continued, "in the circumstances of these . . . cases, is as much a part of the `free trade in ideas,' . . . as is verbal expression, more commonly thought of as `speech.' It, like speech, appeals to good sense and to `the power of reason as applied through public discussion' . . . just as much as, if not more than, a public oration delivered from a soapbox at a street corner." But a man's private business office in downtown New Haven is hardly an appropriate forum in which *344
to stage a "sit-in" demonstration to remonstrate against what the defendants considered odious housing legislation. It is true that the conduct of the defendants was nonabusive, nonviolent and non-boisterous. What they did do was to create an annoying and offensive condition in private offices in downtown New Haven which could not, and did not, serve any legitimate purpose of theirs. "We do not think the statute gauges criminality by the impressions made on an annoyed or disgruntled citizen. Common sense . . . [dictates] that language or conduct is to be adjudged to be disorderly, not merely because it offends some supersensitive or hypercritical individual, but because it is, by its nature, of a sort that is a substantial interference with . . . the reasonable man." People v. Harvey,
There is no error.
In this opinion PRUYN and GEORGE, JS., concurred.