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Criminal Law Keyed to Gershowitz
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota
Citation:
505 U.S. 377, 112 S.Ct. 2538, 120 L.Ed.2d 305Facts
The defendant and several other teenagers allegedly assembled a crudely made cross by taping together broken chair legs. They then allegedly burned the cross inside the fenced yard of a black family that lived across the street from the house where the defendant was staying. Although this conduct could have been punished under any of a number of laws, he was charged under the St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance.
The defendant moved to dismiss this count on the ground that the St. Paul ordinance was substantially overbroad and impermissibly content based and therefore facially invalid under the First Amendment. The trial court granted this motion, but the Minnesota Supreme Court reversed.
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