Has anyone seen a recent case where the harassment statute was found unconstitutional? If it was in the weekly summaries, I missed it.

That would be Karenev v. State, No.02-05-00425-CR, 2008 WL 902799. Judge Dauphinot held that the terms "annoy" and "alarm"" were vague and render the statute facially unconstitutional.

It was the Fort Worth court and I believe only the email part was too vague.


Karenev v. State

42.07. HARASSMENT

A Denton case. Expect a PDR.

JAS

Thanks for the quick answers! I have some harassment cases pending, so this is a big one.

What a terrific and well-written opinion!

I guess I need to read it again because I don't really get the big difference between the telephone part, which is OK, and the email part which is not OK.

Phone:

(4)  causes the telephone of another to ring repeatedly 
or makes repeated telephone communications anonymously 
or in a manner reasonably likely to harass, annoy, 
alarm, abuse, torment, embarrass, or offend another;

Email:

(7)  sends repeated electronic communications in a 
manner reasonably likely to harass, annoy, alarm, 
abuse, torment, embarrass, or offend another.

That big list is there in both rules.

I can see how an incessantly ringing phone or repeated anonymous calls are annoying by their very nature...

Some email is annoying by its very nature (spam or too many messages) and other email is annoying because of its content (she'd rather not read junk from her ex-husband.)

Phone calls that are annoying because of their content would not fit the rule if they are not annonymous. (Bill collector?)

quote:

---

Originally posted by RTC:
What a terrific and well-written opinion!

---

Give me a break.

I expected comments like that. However, let me ask you this: did you read the full opinion and, if so, how many times did you read it?

I ended up reading it about ten times simply because those jerks in the COA haven't a clue on how to correctly format their opinions and website so that it can be properly downloaded without all the weird spelling and format errors. So I had to read it about ten times as I went through it trying to fix the mess they made of it.

Each time I read it the COA's reasoning became more and more clear.

The biggest thing that I took from it was this:

quote:

---

The First Amendment does not permit the outlawing of conduct merely because the speaker intends to annoy the listener and a reasonable person would in fact be annoyed. Many legitimate political protests, for example, contain both of these elements.

---

And, again, keep in mind that we are talking about nonthreatening emails here.

If I walk into your office tomorrow and say that I want to file harassment charges against my local cable company for sending me repeated emails that I found to be harassing or annoying, would any of you take the case? No, you would not. But if Betty Sue walks into your office saying that she is getting nonthreatening emails that are harassing or annoying, you're only too quick to file charges and arrest some guy.

If anyone here is only willing to take one and not the other, that is totally bogus (to use a legal term here). The conduct is entirely the same in both instances.

If you say that you would take both - great! I'll be right down there as I've got some charges I want to file against the cable company, the local Big-Box electronics store, my car dealership, and a bunch of other people/entities that are constantly harassing me and annoying me with their repeated emails.

Isn't there a law that prohibits companies from faxing info without consent of the receiving party? Don't you get something like $100 as a civil fine for each unwanted fax? That prevents a form of harassment.

Can't we put our phones on the "no call" list?

Don't these laws prevent commercial speech?

The clutter we receive on our computers, particularly from spam e-mail is considerable. Why couldn't make it illegal?

The unwanted commercial fax prohibition is the easiest to grok since it costs the recipient actual paper and ink, and once the machine runs out of either, no more incomming faxes can be printed.

quote:

---

Originally posted by RTC:

If you say that you would take both - great! I'll be right down there as I've got some charges I want to file against the cable company, the local Big-Box electronics store, my car dealership, and a bunch of other people/entities that are constantly harassing me and annoying me with their repeated emails.

---

Well, that would be great, because then we would know who you are.

The Forum Fisherman

Aren't we supposed to be discussing this case here instead of engaging in ad hominem attacks?

If y'all don't like what I have to say then please do not click on my posts. But for some reason, my posts get consistently high numbers of clicks, so I must be doing something right.

I honestly do think that this is a terrific opinion and that it was very well written. I find this whole area of email harassment, and harassment in general, to be completely bogus law that only seems to be applied whenever there is a particularly sympathetic victim.

It seems to me that what a person can constitutionally say to your face, they should also be able to say in an email, even if it is over and over and over again. And even if it is something along the lines of "baby please don't break up with me" yada yada yada.

What I don't see here is anyone attacking the validity of this opinion and explaining why they think it is bad.

The First Amendment does not permit the outlawing of conduct merely because the speaker intends to annoy the listener and a reasonable person would in fact be annoyed. Many legitimate political protests, for example, contain both of these elements - and thats the rock, bottom line here, ladies and gents!!

Are you feeling alarmed or annoyed? Are you saying that you should not have to be subjected to such harassment? Would you say that you have any sort of constitutional protection or is that just a preference? How would you amend the Penal Code to prevent this sort of behavior? Or, is it something you just have to tolerate if people feel like doing?

JB can be hilarious at times.

They made a sequel to Jackass. Does that mean the first one was a good movie?