Walking Tall in California

The Supreme Court overturns the state's vagrancy law

Edward Lawson, 37, a bachelor and the head of his own consulting and entrepreneurial firm in San Francisco, liked to take long walks while on business in the San Diego area, often in the dead of night. As he strolled the deserted streets, no one ever bothered him except the police. Between March 1975 and January 1977, Lawson was stopped 15 times for vagrancy under a provision of the California penal code that requires an individual to provide "credible and reliable" identification to a police officer who has reason to be suspicious. Prosecuted twice and convicted once, Lawson brought suit six years ago seeking damages from police officials and trying to get the vagrancy law struck down. The law was unconstitutionally vague, said Lawson, and more important, it violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures" and the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination protection.

Last week, in a 7-to-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court evaded the Fourth and Fifth Amendment questions but ruled that the California statute was indeed too vague to satisfy the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment. The law "contains no standard for determining what a suspect has to do in order to satisfy the requirement to provide a 'credible and reliable' identification," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the majority.

This necessarily entrusts lawmaking "to the moment-to-moment judgment of the policeman on his beat" and furnishes a tool for "harsh and discriminatory enforcement by local prosecuting officials."

Vagrancy, or loitering, laws have drawn the court's disapproval before. In 1972, the Justices unanimously struck down a Jacksonville ordinance aimed at "rogues and vagabonds" along with "common railers and brawlers." Such language does not clearly define the forbidden conduct to an ordinary citizen and "encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests," said Justice William Douglas. Many state and local lawmakers responded by trying to make the language of their vagrancy laws more precise. The statutes are needed, say authorities, to help police on patrol reduce crime. When the court decided to review California's law, the International Association of Chiefs of Police joined in a brief supporting the statute. Says San Diego Prosecutor Daniel Kremer: "It seems to provide a reasonable balance between the individual's interests in privacy and society's interest in security."

Privacy, however, is only one reason that civil libertarians attack vagrancy provisions. "Most officers use race as an index of suspicious conduct," says Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued the case on Lawson's behalf. Rosenbaum naturally exulted in last week's ruling, declaring in Orwellian rhetoric that it "puts 1984 on hold." Because the decision objected only to the law's failure to spell out what identification would be satisfactory, however, California officials are already considering language for a new vagrancy statute.

Lawson is not surprised. "The Supreme Court has avoided the gut issues, which are the violations of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments," he says. Chief Justice Warren Burger "is always whining about how the court is overloaded, and at the same time his court has repeatedly avoided dealing with the main issues."

A slim, eloquent man, Lawson is aware that the dreadlocks he wears may compound the probability that police will stop him. But he has no intention of cutting them, though they have no religious significance to him as they do for the Rastafarians of Jamaica; he just does not like combing and fussing with his hair. "I'm very accustomed to doing what I want to," he says. So he will continue his walking, and if police arrest him under a new law, he is prepared to take the necessary legal journey back to the Supreme Court. . This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.