Melissa Harris can’t believe she’s about to go to trial for standing on her own property and stating what’s basically the unofficial Wyoming state motto: “Get the f*** off my lawn.”
“I just don’t understand why this is progressing to trial, and neither does she,” said her attorney, Robert Piper of the Cheyenne-based Piper Law Group. “And frankly, I’m more than a little disappointed in it.”
Harris, who lives near Wright in Campbell County, is set for an Oct. 27 jury trial on a single misdemeanor breach of peace charge.
If convicted, she could potentially get up to six months in jail.
Her criminal offense?
Telling the adult female guest of a neighbor she’s been feuding with to leave her property on or about April 5 of this year.
More specifically, according to the citation issued by the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office, Harris told the woman to “get the f*** of my lawn.”
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 said.
He adamantly disagrees, maintaining that just saying a profanity in public or where someone can potentially hear it, and being offended, isn’t enough.
The Wyoming Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that there has to be an intent to incite something behind it, Piper argued in a motion to dismiss the case, which was denied.
“The utterance of obscenity alone cannot constitute a crime,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday. “We may not like the speech, but one of the founding principles of our country is the freedom to say it.”
Piper said that he doesn’t believe that in Harris’ case, being angry and using the F-word to tell someone to leave is criminal.
“I just don’t feel like it serves the public interest to (pursue the case) to this degree,” he said. “It’s the utterance of a single obscenity — on somebody’s own property.”
An early Wednesday morning message left for Campbell County Attorney Nathan Henkes regarding Harris’ case wasn’t returned by publication.
Motion To Dismiss Denied
That was part of the case Piper made in his motion to dismiss the charge, which Campbell County Circuit Court Judge Paul S. Phillips ultimately denied.
The judge disagreed with Piper’s argument that the context in which the offending word was said has to be considered. That’s something for the jury to decide, the judge ruled.
“This court cannot determine context in the absence of evidence,” Phillips wrote in his denial of the motion to dismiss.
Even so, there’s common sense to consider as well, Piper said.
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, he said.
“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 pleaded not guilty to the breach of peace charge in May, and fully intends to fight it as long as she has to, her attorney said.
Both hope that can end before taking the time of a jury, judge and court personnel to hear the case of someone telling another to “get the f*** off my lawn,” Piper said.
“I have lost jury trials with similar facts,” he said. “One of the reasons I practice criminal law is because we’re fighting over factors that can deprive someone of their liberty.”
Being prosecuted for saying an obscene word also is just fundamentally un-Wyoming, he said.
“We’re basically a libertarian state that’s forced to vote Republican,” Piper said. “We want to be left alone.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
