That the Bank of America contacted the city attorney's office to reportedly urge prosecution has become part of the dispute.
Make that, they called and visited her office repeatedly over the course of many months to emphasize the quid pro quo established by previous political donations. If any corner store had made a similar ruckus for a one-time chalk-on-sidewalk "incident", the store owner would have been cited for interfering with the duties of the City Attorney.
I look forward to voting for Mayor Filner when he runs for higher office. I'm also glad the jury saw fit to correct the judge's egregious Constitutional error.
It was 13 separate incidents over the course of 6 months. This is how the ridiculous 13 year sentence was derived, as the maximum penalty for each count of vandalism is 1 year.
I could not express my elation in words for this victory!
I said it before when this trended on HN, that I hoped he would go to trial and not take a deal. I don't care if BOFA showed video of him doing it, he had chalk on his hands, and posted pictures up online on FB or Twitter...if I was on the jury, I would've said he wasn't guilty.
Ridiculous lobbying of resources and obvious oppression by BOFA!
Another option is USAA. Unlike their insurance, you don't have to be a member of the military to use their banking services. They are an online-only bank and have magnificent customer service. I switched to them from Wells Fargo a few years back and can't recommend them enough.
If you've ever used a banks website an thought to yourself "This is fucking retarded, who built this pile of shit" switch to USAA. If only for the superior web presence, it's the best thing ever.
I switched to USAA too. Overall I've been happy, but I must admit it's a pain in the butt to get money in there. The only easy way to get money there is direct deposit.
If they'd fix that somehow, it would be fantastic.
You can take a check to a UPS store[1]. If you're a customer of their car insurance, you can also deposit checks directly by taking a picture of them with your phone via their app[2] - I realize that's not accessible to many folks though.
Wait... you're telling me this was chalk like my kids use on my driveway nearly every weekend? The same stuff that takes about 2 seconds to hose off? No shit he's not guilty of vandalism. SMH
Was he actually facing jail time for this, or was the "13 years" line fed to the media by him/his defense?
Jail time for writing in chalk is absurd, but surely he deserved some reasonable punishment for doing this 13 times. A small fine and/or community service seems appropriate.
Wow... Embarrassing that this guy was ever charged in the first place. I thought it was some kind of joke when reading the title or that there was more to it, but nope, that pretty much sums it up, chalk. :|
It should have been one of those news stories that are saved for the 'look at the absurdity' humor sections of the news. It does seem to illustrate the political fighting that has gripped the nation though. The Mayor and DA hold opposite views and drug this into the open.
My tendency is to agree with the mayor; massive waste of money. On the other hand it does serve as a small legal precedent now so I guess there is some absolute value. Maybe.
The public should have zero tolerance for graffiti and vandalism of public property. This guy should have been fined and stuck in jail for 30 days. End of story.
I heard they were trying to put him away for 13 years. That is gross abuse by the justice system. If I were on the jury, I would also declare him not guilty, even though he is.
P.S. You do not have a first amendment right to write on public property. People who are too stupid to understand that, don't actually deserve first amendment rights (though I will still defend their rights, anyway).
With chalk. He "wrote" on public property with chalk. Are you in favor of prosecuting people for "Lost Dog" signs stapled to telephone poles too?
Good grief. Thankfully our courts have historically taken a rather broader view of the limits of political speech than you have. "Too stupid to deserve rights" indeed. That was just disgraceful, stop it.
Writing with chalk on a public sidewalk is "graffiti and vandalism"? I see quite a few businesses write messages on the public sidewalks leading to and in front of their storefronts. They're never brought up on charges of graffiti and vandalism.
This was not a case of graffiti and vandalism of public property, but of a private corporation not appreciating the chalker's sharing of constitutionally protected speech.
Perhaps we can at least agree on the principle, if not the terms, that this was gross abuse of, not by, the justice system.
Everyone deserves First Amendment rights. Whether one understands the limits of those rights is a separate matter entirely.
I find much less to find fault with in the chalker than, say, a hate group protesting funerals. But even they deserve First Amendment rights.
Nobody deserves First Amendment rights if they undermine those very rights by making invalid and nonsensical arguments about them and thereby undermining the public's understanding of them.
Nor do religious bigots who are, in fact, profoundly anti-rights.
We give them rights because we don't want the government to have to judge who deserves what, which would swiftly lead to me not having rights.
> chalker's sharing of constitutionally protected speech
You only have a right to free speech if you don't infringe on other people's rights. Thus, you can't use other people's property, including public property.
Under your logic, you could put a sign up on my house and it would be "constitutionally protected speech."
Your characterization of my logic, as you put it, is grossly flawed.
Your house is not public property. I've said nothing in any way to suggest putting a sign on your private residence is at all protectable free speech or in any way homologous to chalking a sidewalk.
You are fabricating an argument I did not make. In so doing, you appear to either fundamentally misunderstand the First Amendment, or willingly narrow your interpretation of it (which, thankfully, the courts do not stand with you). And you apparently do not understand either what I said, or what you are suggesting.
I think you're making a bit much of my last sentence.
All you had to say was, "My logic actually doesn't reduce to that, because I think everybody has a right to dispose of public property as they wish, but not private property." (Or something like that. Is that what you think?)
I mean, when I said "Under your logic...," I'm just extending your argument in the obvious way, and expecting you to tell me how you extend it differently. I am not presuming to actually know exactly what and how you think, that would be ridiculous.
As for misinterpreting or narrowly interpreting the First Amendment, I don't see how you get that.
> I mean, when I said "Under your logic...," I'm just extending your argument in the obvious way...
Extending my comments to the point that I am allegedly suggesting disregarding private property laws egregiously to erect a sign at your private, personal residence and then call that constitutionally protected free speech is the obvious way?!
We have very different notions of obvious, friend. Your last sentence read as having very little to do with extending my argument in a way that would be obvious to other sensible citizens and, instead, extending it in a way that distorted its meaning entirely to shoe-horn it back into your preferred view of seeing protecting free speech in the public sphere as something that ought to be beholden to a others' definition of whether or not they approve of the message, allowing for legal punishment and incarceration for sharing one's views in a public way.
Can someone put a sign up on your house and it be constitutionally protected free speech? Nope. Can persons stand peaceably outside your house with a sign airing their grievances? Yep, absolutely. Can they write on the sidewalk or street in chalk to get your attention? I'm willing to bet they can, so long as they are not inciting violence or threatening you. You don't own the street or sidewalk. It is public space. And if you are going to abuse the justice system to apprehend and punish them, well, at least you're sticking to your principles. But I hope also that you call the authorities on any children in the neighborhood who might also be writing in chalk on the street. Or any businesses that might so abuse the public space as to write on sidewalks with chalk to grab the attention of consumers.
You called for jail time and a fine for writing in chalk on a sidewalk. You called it graffiti and vandalism. There was no destruction of public property. There was no private property damage, to my knowledge.
You further suggested that there ought to be some kind of litmus test for who deserves First Amendment protections. Thankfully, the founders were wiser than you and did not make our right to speak freely dependent upon passing a test that evaluates our entitlement to constitutional rights beyond that of being a citizen.
> extending it in a way that distorted its meaning entirely to shoe-horn it back into your preferred view
That's just nonsense. It's normal, in an intellectual debate, to say, "Doesn't your position equate to X?" and get a response. That's what I was doing. People can distinguish between that, and actually intentionally misrepresenting someone else's position to make them look bad or "win" the argument.
I restated the issue in simple terms, and I don't see why you didn't just respond to that directly. Again: I think the public has a right to determine how public property is disposed of. I guess you don't? Because writing messages badmouthing a business day after day on the local sidewalk is a public disturbance of public property (the sidewalk). I don't think this has anything whatsoever to do with free speech. It's a property issue.
> You further suggested that there ought to be some kind of litmus test for who deserves First Amendment protections.
I explicitly said the opposite of that in my very first comment on the issue.
> This was a genuinely destructive activity at times.
I don't see why printing pamphlets on your own printing press would be destructive. On the other hand, this guy was defacing other peoples' property (the public's). Defacing other people's property is certainly not constitutionally protected, for any reason.
> I don't see why printing pamphlets on your own printing press would be destructive.
Pamphleteering involved posting bills in public spaces, using nail or glue to put up posters or pamphlets in the public square, etc. It was certainly a pain in the ass for the people who had to clean up afterward, which is why this being a living legal issue dating back a couple of hundred years. And the founders thought it was a process worthy of fundamental legal protection.
As with many constitutional protections, attempts have been made to erode it by well meaning or not so well meaning government, but even in cities like New York it usually just takes a civil liberties lawsuit to make the more egregious restrictions go away.
> On the other hand, this guy was defacing other peoples' property (the public's).
There was no property damage and speech in public spaces is protected.
> Defacing other people's property is certainly not constitutionally protected, for any reason.
When interpreting the bill of rights there is a meaningful distinction between public and private property that you are apparently unaware of. This distinction affects a lot of things under the law, not just what we're talking about.
> That's because that distinction is not, as far as I know, actually in the Bill of Rights.
It's a distinction made in the case law, even by strict textualists like Justice Scalia. It's not a weakness of the document that it doesn't spell everything out for you.
I'm glad that you got the reference, and it was never intended to be ironic. I always liked that character. Of course, I also liked Jean Valjean. Part of the genius of Hugo, and Romantic literature in general, is that you can have profoundly good characters on opposing sides.
What exactly is going on in San Diego's voting booths, anyway? A Republican city attorney on a crusade against chalk, and a far-left civil rights activist mayor?
I'm reading through Filner's record, and the guy looks like a much older version of me. I'm left-wing enough that I think Berkeley would be scared of me, nevermind San Diego.
I respect the jury's decision but have a had time swallowing that anyone who wants to should be able to systematically slander a business in chalk 13 times and it not be considered some sort of crime. Poor precedent. Should have gotten a slap on the wrist.
IANAL, but AFAIK Slander involves communicating a falsehood. "BoA stole $10T of lunch money from children in Africa" would be slander (outside of the context of this post and the fact that it is a clearly ridiculous assertion). "No Thanks, Big Banks" (a representative example of what the guy actually wrote) is not slander.
The charges were for vandalism, which arguably has a place in political discourse and arguably doesn't even deserve a slap on the wrist.
Fair enough on the slander point, but how does this not set a precedent for people to start spamming political messages all over sidewalks in front of Evil Corporation of The Month? The only real reasoning I could see is that perhaps just the fear of being sentence was deterrence enough.
Personally, I'd be thrilled to have such a precedent.
Seriously. It's a sidewalk. When not covered in chalk, it's just a boring surface.
Protests, political slogans, landscapes, ponies, shrines to $deity of your choice, ads for the competing coffee shop on the next street, I'll take it all.
Lets break it down logically. I think most people would agree this guy should be found guilty if he had used spraypaint to deface sidewalks 13 times. Spraypaint, like chalk, is removable too, it just requires more effort and cost. Removing the chalk, according to BoA, cost a few thousand dollars. (Probably because they had to hire someone come with a power washer, and weren't going to ask their employees to do it.)
I guess my question is, why is chalk different than spraypaint in the eyes of the law? Is it because the rain will wash it away, or because the relative cost to washing it away with a hose is low compared to more permanent media? What if there is no hose access to the sidewalk in an area where there is no rain for weeks at a time? Where is the line drawn?
Other people have discussed and refuted your various arguments. I want to tackle something else.
You are dismissing elements of the case as if they aren't important.
> Lets break it down logically.
Logic dictates that you look at the case at hand, not at all the possible permutations.
It's not as if you can say simply that killing someone is a crime and deserves X punishment, regardless of the details, and driving over the speed limit isn't an instant ticket if seen by a cop.
So, then you ask:
> why is chalk different than spraypaint in the eyes of the law?
First, because they are different. They aren't the same. Not all cases of vandalism are the same, and they shouldn't be treated the same.
We see what happens in cases like that when people use zero-tolerance as an excuse to come down hard on someone who was clearly not doing anything harmful.
> What if there is no hose access to the sidewalk in an area where there is no rain for weeks at a time?
And what if it was raining at the time? The person drawing while the rain immediately washed it away. One could argue then that the act of vandalism still occurred in both cases. One just happened to happen while it rained.
Your paint comparison is plainly erroneous. Paint poses practical safety and environmental problems and is therefore not comparable to chalk.
The rest of your comment appears based on an equally faulty premise -- that I would think the messages need to be washed away (naturally or otherwise) at all. Why on earth would I invite massive use of chalk on sidewalks for virtually any purpose if I would be bothered by its presence?
In my view, it was BoA's choice to waste their money on an overpriced erasure of a message they dislike. My opinion on the use of chalk on sidewalks changes not one whit whether they make that choice or not.
Chalk messages could remain on sidewalks until universal thermodynamic equilibrium is achieved, I really couldn't care less.
> Removing the chalk, according to BoA, cost a few thousand dollars.
When I was a kid I used to wash cars for $8-10. A few thousand dollars? Pay 10 year old me a few hundred and I'd wash it every weekend. Forget the car washing business.
Seriously, I would much rather the nutters keep their head down and try some drawing then yell and spit in my face. Hell, it would probably be good for them.
Too bad we don't actually have a popularly elected Evil Corporation of the Month against whom all citizens would chalk political messages on the sidewalks of the nation.
The sidewalks would become so much more interesting and fun.
a) slander is verbal, you were looking for libel and b) even then libel has to be able to be factually disproven.
"No thanks, big banks." and "Shame on Bank of America.", two examples of what was written do not have issues to answer under libel law.
So perhaps understand what you are responding to before decrying getting downvoted. It's hard to take an opinion seriously when it's making serious factual errors.
Somehow I don't think my mis-use of the word "slander" was the reason for the downvotes. It's an obvious "I disagree, fuck this person, downvoted" phenomenon.
Make that, they called and visited her office repeatedly over the course of many months to emphasize the quid pro quo established by previous political donations. If any corner store had made a similar ruckus for a one-time chalk-on-sidewalk "incident", the store owner would have been cited for interfering with the duties of the City Attorney.
I look forward to voting for Mayor Filner when he runs for higher office. I'm also glad the jury saw fit to correct the judge's egregious Constitutional error.