How odd that in the history section of the statute that case, nor even the year, are not mentioned.
Subsection 2 previously said:
“A person found in or loitering near any structure, vehicle or private grounds who is there without the consent of the owner and is unable to account for his presence; . . .”
Doesn’t need to be in the statute as I have said previously vagrancy itself is rarely charged. But loitering, criminal trespass, and prowling are. I’ve yet to have one of my criminal trespass arrests or prowling cites booted.
And aggressive panhandling ordinances are still enforced. Ordinance violations, while arrestable acts, are not crimes here. So the homeless person who is convicted of one gets issued a fine that they will not pay, which results in a warrant for failure to pay and sometimes bail jumping, then they get picked up again on that, and round and round it goes.
I was born 1960 and I remember these signs “Irrelevant occupation of these premises is unlawfull.” all over public places, parks etc. in Helsinki, Finland. They disappeared in 70’s when someone argued in court that in public place there is no such thing as irrelevant occupation because the relevance of occupation is and should be based not by society but by the person and for someone even wasting time might be relevant occupation and thus allowed in public place.
Private premises still have those signs and it is fine as one can argue that rollerskating or just loitering is not relevant occupation of a private owned mall.
If finnish language had had word for “loitering” then the situation might have been different. But the argument that for public place there cannot be irrelevant occupation has been held in Finland since it was bought under question.
Criminal occuptaion is of course relevant to the criminal and thus totally different thing.
This is GQ so to keep it that way, I’ll just say that this was the popular opinion of courts in the 1960s and 70s. The standing idea wasn’t that vagrancy or loitering laws were unconstitutional per se, but that they were so vaguely worded as to not give people a clear idea of what sort of conduct was prohibited and therefore violated due process.
If I am sitting on a park bench enjoying the nice spring day, and you are doing the same thing, but the police don’t like you, then you could be subject to arrest at the whim of any officer on the street. That is and was unfair. But I don’t think that more tightly worded laws would be struck down.
Perhaps too the courts’ dislike of vagrancy laws involved the person being required to give account of themselves simply for being in a public place, or face arrest. IIRC the case in Texas (?) that the Supreme Court said requires a person to identify themselves to police only applies if there is a reason to suspect they are involved in a violation of the law, not for simply walking down the street, loitering, or sitting on a park bench. The police do not have the right to randomly accost anyone and demand/require they account for themselves satisfactorily or be charged.
Indeed that seems to be an issue, however loitering and vagrancy laws worded just like that have a pedigree going back hundreds of years. The right to remain silent, prior to the 1960s, was largely considered a trial right and not universally applicable to interactions on the street. You are correct that it would certainly be a constitutional issue today, but I don’t know of any published opinions that have struck down vagrancy laws on those grounds.
Further, these laws were created during a time when the local constabulary knew people in their jurisdiction. If I am sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich in a shirt and tie, the local police would say, “Ah, that’s UltraVires taking a lunch break between hearings.” If Otis the town drunk was sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich and nursing his hangover, in tattered clothing and stinking up the place, then Otis would be arrested.
Some would say that this is a feature, not a bug of the law, but it is patently unfair to punish Otis for the exact same conduct that I am engaged in.
I was moved on due to merely sitting on a bench with my backpack in Venice, threatened with jail for vagrancy. But that law was repealed just a few years later, in 1999. So I wondered if most countries in the EU had changed their laws too, but at least one, Hungary, changed its laws the other way, and made street sleeping illegal in 2018.
Thanks, that led me to Hibel which I believe was the one I was thinking of. (Nevada). Only need to identify oneself if there is “reasonable suspicion of involvement in a crime”.
…the [Nevada] law requires the person detained to “identify himself”, but does not compel the person to answer any other questions put to him by the officer. The Nevada Supreme Court has interpreted that “identify himself” to mean to merely state his name.
There are books and books upon books and books of commentary, commentary on the commentary, commentary on THAT commentary, and so on and so on in Judaism, both on the Bible itself and on codification of what used to be oral law.
But that’s because in the days that all this stuff was written, it WAS the law for Jewish communities, and Judaism is a particularly legalistic religion; so really that’s just another example from another culture of how much research, annotation, and cross-referencing people put into their legal system.
Yep. And we are still in GQ, so I will be GQ-y. Many commentators said that Hibel was a pretty wide departure from Terry and its progeny that said that people are fully free to shut up and walk away from a police officer who questions them. With this precedent, it remains an open question if a person not only needs to say his name, but give an account of himself as to why he is there.
The point was “reasonable suspicion of involvement in a crime”. If there’s no crime immediately at hand (or allegation of one) and the suspect does not fit the profile of alleged involved persons, then the same rule applies - a person can decline to answer questions, and walk away. As I see it, this simply says that the police do not need to have sufficient grounds for arrest for a crime to ask “who is this person?” in case they determine on further investigation that they might have had reasonable grounds.
This is substantially different from the old vagrancy laws, which allowed police to stop and interrogate people for no good reason, and even arrest them if they disliked the answers. Police have to have a good reason to specifically stop you, and only to obtain an identity. Of course, i assume that giving a false name could be obstruction. No guidance on nicknames?
No. Again, GQ. I don’t believe that is the takeaway from those cases. I mean take a read at Papachristou and look at the statute. Even a guy like me has a problem with that. Tighten it up and I think that this Supreme Court would be okay with it.
The vagrancy ordinance was unconstitutionally “void for vagueness” for two reasons.[14] First, it failed to provide fair notice to individuals about what conduct was forbidden by the law.[14] Second, it encouraged arbitrary arrests and convictions. … The Court reasoned that the Jacksonville ordinance did not give sufficient notice about what was forbidden and that, as written, it could in fact criminalize a variety of innocent activities.
Pretty straight-forward. A law has to say what is illegal - not that if the police decide you are the target, then normal everyday activity is illegal (the sitting park bench and how you’re dressed example).
I guess the question is - can you write a law that defines vagrancy in such a way that anyone can tell it is being violated, and it can apply to everyone who takes that action? (and is obvious without the police demanding details from the perp beyond their name?) I suppose you could make it illegal for anyone to sit on a park bench for more than 15 minutes or stand on the sidewalk for 15 minutes. Good luck with that - it has to be reasonable too. If you stand more than 15 feet from from the bus stop sign waiting for the bus, you’re loitering?
Yes. These were “we know it when we see it” types of laws. We know UltraVires isn’t harming the public and we know that Otis is. That doesn’t stand up to modern standards of justice especially now with a police force that largely doesn’t know people that they are policing, and seeing a white guy in a shirt and tie, and a black dude in tattered clothing causes extra, double problems.
And your 15 minute rule would lead to selective enforcement. Oh, UltraVires sat there for 20 minutes because he needed to kill time. Otis was there for 16, but we want to arrest him anyways, so off to jail he goes. But then again, all laws are selectively enforced and it is hard to prove that the police did it for an illegal reason.
These laws are almost like obscenity laws. We know it when we see it, but how can we make it fair so that people like Otis aren’t just screwed with?