Posted on 06/12/2015 12:11:04 PM PDT by GIdget2004
The Iowa Supreme Court has affirmed the right to be drunk on your front porch.
The court ruled Friday in the case of Patience Paye, who appealed her 2013 public intoxication conviction.
Paye called police after fighting with her boyfriend and met officers on the front porch of her Waterloo home. While investigating the domestic assault complaint an officer questioned Paye about whether she'd been drinking.
A test revealed her blood alcohol concentration at 0.267 percent, more than three times the amount considered drunk for driving.
She was charged and convicted. But she appealed, saying her front porch isn't a public place.
The Supreme Court agreed, declaring the front steps of a private residence not a public place if the homeowner hasn't invited the general public to be there.
(Excerpt) Read more at kake.com ...
Seriously, isn’t that what the front porch has always been for, for centuries, where dad drank his beer in a bucket, and his Mint Juleps, and tugged on his jug, and sat, after the day was finished?
This took a court ruling to establish?!
So many people (including police) do not understand public vs private. There is a difference between ownership and access.
Public Ownership / Public access = sidewalk, public parks, roads
Public Ownership / Private access = City Jail, Pentagon, etc
Private Ownership / Public access = unfenced drive way or path leading to your home
Private Ownership / Private access = interior of the house
What happens when you are three steps off the front porch and three steps into the yard?
LOL, see, you didn’t address the porch either!
... and three sheets to the wind?
Answer: You fall down!
That's what I thought -- you have to be kidding.
This is overreaching by the local prosecutor. I wish there was a way to slap these buttheads down, and make them personally liable.
Thanks. Nice summation.
Although I think your #3 goes to #4 when the property owner decides he doesn’t want somebody on his path or driveway.
I’ve seen some claim it’s trespassing to walk up to someone’s front door and knock!
Good.
From time to time we’d get a DIP (Drunk in Public) where someone was drunk on the front porch. Absent some compelling reason we’d always use prosecutorial discretion and dismiss them.
Dang straight. Being drunk on your front porch is an inalienable right. :-)
Your yard....your porch....your house....your patio....your pool
Yours! Drink Up.
What you should ask is how this was not LAUGHED out of court in the first place. It is the local prosecutor and first judge who should be shamed!
Fourth Amendment - US Constitution - Ratified 1791!
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Presumptively the charge was public intoxication which has a prerequisite of being in PUBLIC. One's own porch at one's own house visible from public property is not being in public.
“How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.”
“LOL, see, you didn’t address the porch either!”
HA HA, that’s what I was thinking too. And what about the back porch?
Can SCOTUS weigh in on this?
Better on the front porch than out driving around in her car.
Public Ownership / Public access = sidewalk, public parks, roads
Agree, yet a homeowner is still responsible to maintain the sidewalk (shoveling snow/ice) or can be sued if someone falls.
A mouth full of dirt & grass
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