This is a court case about the First Amendment, a newspaper and profanity.
It's about a newspaper that was thrown but not read.
On July 4 three years ago, Andre Devon Arthur tossed a newspaper on Market Street in Frederick. He said he was trying to get it to a friend — "just like playing catch" — but the paper hit a police car instead. It was 10 minutes before midnight, and Cpl. Eric Stanley, who heard "the thump of an item hitting my patrol vehicle," was not a happy cop.
He confronted Arthur, who he said immediately began yelling obscenities. Stanley fought with him as he cuffed him and hauled him off to jail. A jury convicted the man of resisting arrest and failing to obey the lawful order of a police officer.
A judge sentenced Arthur to a year and 60 days in jail.
Two days before this most recent Fourth of July, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the state's second-highest court, upheld the conviction. It's another one of those seemingly trivial yet everyday confrontations between police and citizenry that quickly escalates beyond anyone's control.
The case also has First Amendment implications: Was Arthur really arrested for yelling too loudly, as the police contended? Or was he arrested because of his language, as his lawyer contended? The court sided with the officer, ruling that "he arrested appellant because of the volume" of the words "and not their content."
As with most cases before the state's appellate courts, simple issues become rather complex — immersed in the intricacies of the law and hinging on the most nuanced of phrases. This case is no different.
Arthur argued that the trial court judge failed to properly instruct the jury "as to the longstanding legal principle that, in Maryland, a person is privileged to offer reasonable resistance to an unlawful warrantless arrest."
The judge had declined to use those precise words, and instead told jurors that to convict, they had "to find that there was reasonable grounds to believe that the defendant had committed a crime." The appellate court ruled that he judge had sufficiently covered his bases.
That brings us to the content of Arthur's speech.
Arthur's attorney argued that Stanley didn't like what was being said and arrested him. Because that was an infringement on his right to free speech, the lawyer told the court, his client was justified in resisting what amounted to an unlawful arrest.
But the appellate judges noted that the officer repeatedly told Arthur to "settle down" and that he was so loud that people emerged from the nearby Old Town Tavern to watch the commotion. The court also noted that it was late at night, in a residential neighborhood, and that "individuals in their homes were entitled to be free from unreasonably loud noise."
Said the court: "A rational jury could find that Corporal Stanley's order that appellant lower his voice was content-neutral and was based on the volume of appellant's voice. The jury could also find that the order was reasonable, that it was intended to prevent a disturbance to the public peace, and that the appellant disobeyed it."
A newspaper is better read than thrown.