Melissa Harris can\u2019t believe she\u2019s about to go to trial for standing on her own property and stating what\u2019s basically the unofficial Wyoming state motto: \u201cGet the f*** off my lawn.\u201d The Wright-area woman has been charged with breach of peace.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
By Greg Johnson<\/p>\n\n\n\n Melissa Harris can\u2019t believe she\u2019s about to go to trial for standing on her own property and stating what\u2019s basically the unofficial Wyoming state motto: \u201cGet the f*** off my lawn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just don\u2019t understand why this is progressing to trial, and neither does she,\u201d said her attorney, Robert Piper of the Cheyenne-based Piper Law Group. \u201cAnd frankly, I\u2019m more than a little disappointed in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris, who lives near Wright in Campbell County, is set for an Oct. 27 jury trial on a single misdemeanor breach of peace charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If convicted, she could potentially get up to six months in jail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her criminal offense?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Telling the adult female guest of a neighbor she\u2019s been feuding with to leave her property on or about April 5 of this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More specifically, according to the citation issued by the Campbell County Sheriff\u2019s Office, Harris told the woman to \u201cget the f*** of my lawn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s Office, Piper said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He adamantly disagrees, maintaining that just saying a profanity in public or where someone can potentially hear it, and being offended, isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe utterance of obscenity alone cannot constitute a crime,\u201d he told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday. \u201cWe may not like the speech, but one of the founding principles of our country is the freedom to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Piper said that he doesn\u2019t believe that in Harris\u2019 case, being angry and using the F-word to tell someone to leave is criminal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just don\u2019t feel like it serves the public interest to (pursue the case) to this degree,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s the utterance of a single obscenity \u2014 on somebody\u2019s own property.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n An early Wednesday morning message left for Campbell County Attorney Nathan Henkes regarding Harris\u2019 case wasn\u2019t returned by publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The judge disagreed with Piper\u2019s argument that the context in which the offending word was said has to be considered. That\u2019s something for the jury to decide, the judge ruled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis court cannot determine context in the absence of evidence,\u201d Phillips wrote in his denial of the motion to dismiss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even so, there\u2019s common sense to consider as well, Piper said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf I were to go to downtown Gillette on a Friday night and issue a ticket to everyone who said the F-word, we wouldn\u2019t have any trees left for all the paper it would take to write all those tickets,\u201d Piper said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cget the f*** off my lawn,\u201d Piper said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have lost jury trials with similar facts,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of the reasons I practice criminal law is because we\u2019re fighting over factors that can deprive someone of their liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being prosecuted for saying an obscene word also is just fundamentally un-Wyoming, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re basically a libertarian state that\u2019s forced to vote Republican,\u201d Piper said. \u201cWe want to be left alone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is nuts. If you live in Campbell County and want to trespass someone, don’t use profanity? And if in this small town you can get law enforcement officers to charge such a crime along with the prosecutor willing to take it to trial, where in America are you safe? And it’s a form of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wyoming"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18767,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18766\/revisions\/18767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Campbell](\"https:\/\/cowboystatedaily.imgix.net\/Campbell-County-Sheriff-and-Wright-9.16.26.jpg?ixlib=js-3.8.0&q=75&auto=format%2Ccompress\")
Motion To Dismiss Denied<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n