“Breach of Peace”: Woman Heads to Court for Telling Neighbor’s Friend to “Get the F**k Off My Lawn”

A report at the Cowboy State Daily explains it’s “basically the unofficial Wyoming state motto.”

But now a woman is going to trial for standing on her own property and stating, “Get the f**k off my lawn.”

“I just don’t understand why this is progressing to trial, and neither does she,” the lawyer representing Melissa Harris, Robert Piper, told the publication.

“And frankly, I’m more than a little disappointed in it.”

The official charge against Harris, of Campbell County, is a misdemeanor breach of peace charge. It carries a penalty of up to six months in jail

The report explains her offense was to tell “the adult female guest of a neighbor she’s been feuding with to leave her property on or about April 5 of this year.”

The incident was documented by officers from the county sheriff’s office.

“That others within earshot heard the profanity uttered in an attempt to trespass someone from her property constitutes breach of peace, according to the Campbell County Attorney’s Office,” Piper explained.

He says that actually, the state Supreme Court has said there has to be an intent to incite something, not just a profane uttering where someone can hear it.

“The utterance of obscenity alone cannot constitute a crime,” he told the Daily. “We may not like the speech, but one of the founding principles of our country is the freedom to say it.”

He said, “I just don’t feel like it serves the public interest to (pursue the case) to this degree. It’s the utterance of a single obscenity — on somebody’s own property.”

It was Judge Paul S. Phillips who rejected Piper’s motion to dismiss.

The lawyer did warn, “If exclaiming a single obscene word within earshot of someone who might become offended rises to the level of breaching the peace, most people in Wyoming would be habitual criminals,” the report explained.

“If I were to go to downtown Gillette on a Friday night and issue a ticket to everyone who said the F-word, we wouldn’t have any trees left for all the paper it would take to write all those tickets,” Piper said.

Harris has pleaded not guilty.

https://thelibertydaily.com/breach-peace-woman-heads-court-telling-neighbors-friend/