MaggieD
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2010
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That is not how disorderly conduct is defined, no. At least not in Mass.
A general guideline is not to assume you know more about the law than the judge does, or the prosecutor. If you think the judge is wrong, find documentation to back yourself up.
Instead of, you know, declaring the judge's ruling "ridiculous" based on a separate charge that doesn't even remotely apply here.
His ruling is ridiculous. I don't know what charge should be levied against a grown man who's peeping under ladies' skirts and photographing what he finds. But that doesn't mean I can't rightly believe his ruling that it's NOT against the law as being ridiculous.
And perhaps you should keep your own counsel:
Under Massachusetts’s laws, it is a crime to be a “disorderly person.” People are disorderly if they engage in fighting, threats, or violent or excessively noisy behavior, or create dangerous or offensive conditions without good reason, and in order to inconvenience, annoy, or alarm others. (Commonwealth v. Sinai, 714 N.E.2d 830, 47 Mass. App. Ct. 544 (1999).) For example, people who get into bar fights or leave garbage and human waste in public parks could be arrested for disorderly conduct.
It is also a crime to:
be a prostitute
keep a house of prostitution
accost or annoy another with offensive and disorderly acts or language
engage in lewd speech or behavior in public, or
commit indecent exposure.
I'd call taking an unskirt photograph as being annoying and offensive.