Gregory v. City of Chicago

394 U.S. 111, 89 S. Ct. 946, 22 L. Ed. 2d 134, 1969 U.S. LEXIS 2295

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: March 10, 1969
• Docket: 60
• Status: Published

Opinions

Mr. Chief Justice Warren

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a simple case. Petitioners, accompanied by Chicago police and an assistant city attorney, marched in a peaceful and orderly procession from city hall to the mayor’s residence to press their claims for desegregation of the public schools. Having promised to cease singing at 8:30 p. m., the marchers did so. Although petitioners and the other demonstrators continued to march in a completely lawful fashion, the onlookers became unruly as the number of bystanders increased. Chicago police, to prevent what they regarded as an impending civil disorder, demanded that the demonstrators, upon pain of arrest, disperse. When this command was not obeyed, petitioners were arrested for disorderly conduct.

Petitioners’ march, if peaceful and orderly, falls well within the sphere of conduct protected by the First Amendment. See Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, post, p. 147; Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U. S. 131, 141-142 (1966) (prevailing opinion of Mr. Justice Fortas) ; Henry v. City of Rock Hill, 376 U. S. 376 (1964); Fields v. South Carolina, 375 U. S. 44 (1963), reversing 240 S. C. 366, 126 S. E. 2d 6 (1962). There is no evidence in this record that petitioners’ conduct was disorderly. Therefore, under the principle first established in Thompson v. City of Louisville, 362 U. S. 199 (1960), convictions so totally devoid of evidentiary support violate due process.

The opinion of the Supreme Court of Illinois suggests that petitioners were convicted not for the manner in which they conducted their march but rather for their refusal to disperse when requested to do so by Chicago police. See 39 Ill. 2d 47, 60, 233 N. E. 2d 422, 429 (1968). However reasonable the police request may have been and however laudable the police motives, petitioners were charged and convicted for holding a demonstration, not for a refusal to obey a police officer.

* As we said in Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U. S. 157, 164 (1961): “[I]t is as much a denial of due process to send an accused to prison following conviction for a charge that was never made as it is to convict him upon a charge for which there is no evidence to support that conviction.” See also In re Oliver, 333 U. S. 257, 273 (1948).

Finally, since the trial judge’s charge permitted the jury to convict for acts clearly entitled to First Amendment protection, Stromberg v. California, 283 U. S. 359 (1931), independently requires reversal of these convictions.

The judgments are

Reversed.

The trial judge charged solely in terms of the Chicago ordinance. Neither the ordinance nor the charge defined disorderly conduct as the refusal to obey a police order.