Meaningless Word Number 6: Annoying

The Indiana Supreme Court reversed its Court of Appeals, which held the public intoxication statute’s language unduly vague.

Indiana’s 2012 public-intoxication law makes a criminal of someone who, while drunk in a public place, “harasses, annoys, or alarms another person.” (The statute improved upon the state’s previous public intoxication law, which made it illegal to be drunk in public, period.)

The Supreme Court didn’t see the problem.

There is little doubt that the subjective application of the term “annoys” would lead to absurd results and exceedingly broad discretion in enforcement. However, recognizing that statutes need not precisely state the prohibited conduct and should be read to avoid absurd results, principles of statutory interpretation instruct this Court to read a reasonableness standard into our public intoxication statute when analyzing the term “annoys.”

In other words, the court wrote a “reasonable person” standard into the statute, so that things which “annoy” a reasonable person are a crime.  Of course, that “reasonable person,” in the absence of a roving panel of really reasonable people who can magically appear on the scene at the snap of fingers, will be a reasonable cop.  His discretion will subsequently be reviewed by the “reasonable judge,” such as those on the Court of Appeals, who will be later told by the Supreme Court that they are not, sadly, reasonable at all.

Words. What would do with them?

As noted at the Free Thought Project, this is just a little prone to abuse:

Justice Steven David, one of the judges who voted to uphold the law, said that the statute is fine as it is currently written, because “any reasonable person can easily understand the types of behaviors that are prohibited when the word ‘annoy’ is listed alongside ‘harass’ and ‘alarm’ ‘annoys.’” However, this is not how police will interpret the law while on-duty, the law will be interpreted in a way that justifies an arrest, whether that arrest is truly warranted or not.

In this respect, you can’t exactly blame the cops for being cops.  The conduct that violates the law is that which annoys, and who’s to say what annoys but the person making the judgment call?  Assuming the best, it leaves the crime to the discretion of police. At worst, it can be used by police to arrest anyone they find intoxicated.  And make it stick with a few words in the story to express just how annoying they were.

In the effort to reach conduct that defies objective definition and quantification, language like “annoys,” not to mention “harass” and “bully” and a slew of other very popular descriptions of things that, well, annoy people these days have become the catch-all means of characterizing conduct.  They suffer from a constant problem, that they are incapable of adequate definition to provide notice as to the conduct prohibited.

When Justice David proclaims “any reasonable person can easily understand the types of behaviors that are prohibited when the word ‘annoy’ is listed,” most people will nod their heads in agreement. Sure, they know what annoys them. Sure, they’re reasonable. Just ask them. They’ll tell you.

The problem is that we all have our own threshold levels of annoyance. Minor annoyances, like when the cable TV goes out for the 43rd time this month.  Major annoyances like when the customer service rep from Comcast tries to explain to you why you will need to spend the next hour on the phone with him before you stand a chance of canceling your service.  Is that what you’re talking about, Judge?

We’re all used to using, and thinking, in such vague terms in our everyday lives, which makes such language appear relatively unremarkable.  But then, when we think to ourselves, “Geez that guy is annoying,” it isn’t for the purpose of justifying our slapping the cuffs on him.  Our determination, as the reasonable people we are, is for our own classification purposes. We don’t get to take him on the ride, whether or not he beats the rap.

Then again, we can argue and disagree, quantify and qualify, whether something is annoying at all, or sufficiently annoying to rise to the level of criminal conduct.  There is no list of things people do, drunk or sober, that comprise annoying conduct sufficient to arrest.  Where is the line?

The insertion of the reasonable person standard is a ploy courts use to avoid the hard labor of defining language such that people can know what conduct is prohibited and what is just merely, well, annoying.  Most of the argument in favor of such laws comes from those who argue the harm, the suffering, someone causes by engaging in annoying conduct.

This is the anecdote problem, highlighting an instance of wrongdoing that must be stopped.  Maybe in this instance it’s the nightmare of some drunk guy peeing on some old lady’s prize petunias, destroying their chances of winning the World’s Best Petunia Contest for the 19th year in a row. A travesty for sure.  What reasonable person doesn’t feel her pain?

Or as in the case before the Indiana Supreme Court, where the court found the underlying conduct, drunk and sleeping in a bus shelter, insufficiently annoying to constitute a crime, the state argued:

“A reasonable person would readily understand that it is annoying for a person to be passed out drunk in a public bus stop,” he wrote in a March court brief asking the state’s highest court to hear the case.

Frankly, it seems he would have been a whole lot more annoying if he wasn’t asleep, a point with which the court might agree:

The justices ruled that “the degree of agitation expressed…by Morgan, standing alone, does not rise to the level that would annoy a reasonable person.”

What that level might be, of course, is any reasonable person’s guess. Much as I might venture an opinion, chances are that someone will bully and harass me for it.  Being a reasonable person, I will know.

5 thoughts on “Meaningless Word Number 6: Annoying

  1. Jim Tyre

    In other words, the court wrote a “reasonable person” standard into the statute, so that things which “annoy” a reasonable person are a crime. Of course, that “reasonable person,” in the absence of a roving panel of really reasonable people who can magically appear on the scene at the snap of fingers, will be a reasonable cop.

    One of my more creative money-making schemes when I was in l-sk00l was to get myself certified as a reasonable person. They really are in demand, and, of course, any fee I might choose to charge for my services definitionally would be reasonable.

    Many agreed I was certifiable, but sadly, no one would certify me.

  2. John Barleycorn

    Get your gland checked before it annoys you.

    Peeing on Petunias PSA:

    Frank Zappa would have been 74 today. He died at 53 from prostrate cancer.

    P.S. Look on the bright side If you live in Indiana you can now have your in-laws arrested over the holidays without guilt if you spike the punch. The court had spoken. How cool is that?! Don’t abuse your powers.

      1. Wheeze the People™

        True story. I went to a wedding reception yesterday (under protest, please understand) as the designated driver. After everyone but me was well beyond liquored up and dancing like drunken imbeciles to the “hits” of 2014, I had enough. I ripped the patch cord out of the sound system in the middle of a Wiz Khalifa song, which I then plugged in my iPhone and fired up – you guessed it – Frank Zappa’s “Don’t You Eat The Yellow Snow” . . .

        The sad part is that I was nearly booed out of the place and threatened with violence for my peaceful protest. We’re all doomed I say, doomed. Oh, how I miss Mr. Zappa . . .

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