Posted on 09/27/2016 12:21:58 PM PDT by simpson96
OKLAHOMA CITY — A New Jersey woman who was arrested during a 2014 protest of a satanic “Black Mass” has sued Oklahoma City and police a month after her municipal convictions were thrown out.
Joan Bell, a longtime activist who said she has been arrested hundreds of times, claims that her civil rights were violated when she was wrongfully arrested.
Bell, 68, was arrested during the protest after she refused to cease kneeling while saying the rosary on a landing at the top of the north steps of the Civic Center Music Hall. She said she attended the Sept. 21, 2014, protest of the Black Mass, a parody of the Catholic Mass, to pray against the “hate crime” occurring inside the Civic Center.
(Excerpt) Read more at tulsaworld.com ...
However, I think the court got this one right. I suspect the key element might have been that this was public property, analogous to a public sidewalk.
The public can use a public sidewalk if they don't block driveways, obstruct vehicle or pedestrian traffic, violate noise ordinances, accost people offensively, or otherwise cause a nuisance.
The Satanic Temple people could legally block access to their own leased meeting room, since they had some kind of event contract, but could not legally block access to public areas not covered by their contract. Specifically, they could not bar the public from an outside area (which is where Mrs. Bell had quietly and unobtrusively positioned herself to pray.)
Hence Mrs. Bell was in the right, and Satanic Temple (assuming they instigated the arrest) and the arresting officers were in the wrong.
? That's how I read it, on the basis of the information I have seen.
Looks like she has experience doing things to get arrested. Reminds me a bit of Fred Phelps and the Westboro gang, who used to have a successful business of getting arrested, then suing. Except it looks like this gal has actually done some time.
Better by far would it have been if the government down there had refused to allow a satanic Black Mass. If the Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City has no legal right to hold an actual Mass in this public music hall (and he does not), then neither do satanists have a right to use that hall for their "Black Mass."
Joan Andrews is also a living saint but Oklahoma City has no constitutional business recognizing that obvious fact. Nor does Oklahoma City have any business interfering with her kneeling and praying in a public venue since she has a First Amendment freedom of worship. The satanic "Black Mass" was taking place INSIDE the publicly owned building and necessarily required impermissible government involvement.
What did they arrest her for? Kneeling in the first degree? Praying in the first degree?
And, no you won't get me if I don't watch out!
Father Norman Weslin, pray for us! Henry Hyde, pray for us! Antonin Scalia, pray for us!
If you want to disagree with wrongful appellate decisions, first they ought to be wrongful. Try Roe vs. Wade and its evil progeny. Try the "gay" "marriage" decision. Try all these little decisions forcing "transgenders" on innocent little school children. Or levying ruinous fines on decent Christian bakers for refusing to bake "wedding" cakes for two perverts.
I can disagree with as many wrongful decisions as I like. Maybe you can only handle disagreeing with a few decisions at a time, I don’t know, but I don’t have that problem.
“by what authority was she to be removed”
By the same authority that anyone invokes when they ask people to leave their property. You can question the decision all you want, go sue em for all I care, but if they ask you to leave that isn’t the time to question their decision, unless you just want to escalate the situation.
“this was public property, analogous to a public sidewalk”
It’s not analogous to a sidewalk. There are many different legal classifications for public property, and this wouldn’t fall in the same category as a sidewalk. Sidewalks don’t have hours of operation, areas of restricted access, security guards, etc, like most public buildings do.
She didn’t get arrested for kneeling, she got arrested for refusing to leave when asked, which is trespassing.
Bottom line, the appeals judge wrote an 18-page opinion stating that Joan Bell was within her rights, was not guilty of breaking any law, and the police arrested her wrongfully.
I guess we won't have the entire explanation until we have that 18 page document.
In any event, the Oklahoma courts have ruled that the authorities in this case have violated the law and Mrs. Bell's rights. What she did may upset the heathens but it was no crime. She has the right to exercise her First Amendment Freedom of Worship at a publicly owned place without being molested and arrested by police. She (and the Oklahoma judges) know the Constitution better by far than you.
Your "legal" argument is that you want people like her arrested. Not much of an argument. You are not the Emperor of Cream Cheese. Courts are often wrong but not here. As the judges are ruling, the Constitution prevails over your prejudices. The "authorities" had no right whatsoever to order her to leave, to stand, to stop praying and therefore arrested her wrongfully. No One died and left them God. They interfered with her rights. Mrs. Bell interfered with NO ONE's "rights."
Hopefully, she will relieve Oklahoma City of substantial dollars and devote every nickel to pro-life and other Godly causes and get a permanent injunction restraining further lawlessness by Oklahoma City officials under penalty of substantial (hopefully ruinous) fines for contempt and maybe even jail terms for law-defying public officials.
Tell it to the judge. Good luck!
You can indulge in as many heathen fantasies as you like but Mrs. Bell STILL has the right to pray in public places in a manner not obstructing others, whether you like it or not.
I never said she didn’t. What I’ve been saying is if you are asked to leave a place and you don’t, that is in fact trespassing.
“She was arrested for kneeling and praying a rosary on PUBLIC property”
Incorrect. She was arrested for trespassing after she refused to leave when asked to by a police officer.
“Bell did not violate hours of operation or go to an area of restricted access. “
Never said she did. I was just pointing out that those types of restrictions draw a clear demarcation between one type of public property (a civic center, for example) and another (a sidewalk).
She was on her knees. She was obstructing no one. She was on PUBLIC property open to ALL MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC. The officer had no authority to demand that she get off her knees, no authority to stop her from praying and no authority to require her to leave.
You can be as stubborn as you like in making up your own laws but common sense and the Oklahoma courts make it obvious that you are wrong. Criminal trespass in any jurisdiction is governed by the law of that jurisdiction consistent with overriding and relevant constitutional law.
OK
A police officer is clothed with LIMITED authority and ONLY limited authority and always subject to LAW. A police officer may, for example, use force in the course of his duties but ONLY that force which is necessary to effect a legitimate and lawful purpose.
When I began practicing law, the judges in the otherwise liberal jurisdiction in which I practiced had consistently ruled that a police officer was justified in shooting or even killing a fleeing suspect just because he was fleeing. Flight suggested that the person was a fleeing felon even if the officer had little specific knowledge of the suspect.
The case law on that has changed substantially. Earlier this week, the Massachusetts (not where I practiced) Supreme Judicial Court actually ruled that black suspects are legally justified in fleeing because police had a history of mistreating blacks. Where that leaves 14th Amendment rights to require "equal protection of the laws" to all persons within a state's jurisdiction, we are left to speculate. Is that state judgment federally prohibited or are white suspects also free to flee from police because blacks have been found to have been mistreated and whites are entitled to equal protection?
One concludes that, as is often the case, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (which had previously invented "gay" "marriage" out of whole cloth claiming that to be the intention of John Adams in writing the Commonwealth's constitution in the 1700s, did not really think this all the way through and that it probably is incapble of thinking it through.
Not so with Oklahoma courts which find that Mrs. Bell could not be guilty as charged because the charges were baseless.
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