The Law

Unconstitutional Restriction Overturned by Ron Davis Efforts to bar a disorderly customer from a California shopping center have failed a critical test. The shopping center is Country Club Villa in San Jose. And the customer’s disorderly conduct occurred not on center property, but at an adjacent apartment complex. The customer was pushing a shopping cart through the complex when the property manager there confronted him and warned him that he was trespassing. The customer responded by punching the manager in her face. She summoned police, and officers who responded had to struggle with the customer before subduing and arresting him. Police charged him with battery on a police officer and one count of resisting arrest. In a negotiated sentencing, a local judge ordered him to serve six months in jail. But as a condition of the sentencing, the judge ordered the customer to “stay off the premise of the entire parking lot and all the structures of Country Club Villa Shopping Center,” adding, “and don’t go on the premises in any way.” In fact, the judge not only ordered the customer to refrain from entering center property, but “remain 300 yards” from its boundaries. The reason for such an order, the judge explained, is to prevent the center’s manager from having to contend with the customer or deal with him in the future. In response to that restriction, the customer’s lawyer pointed out that such a measure forbidding him from an otherwise lawful visit to the center is an unconstitutional restriction of the right to travel. Moreover, the lawyer added, such a restriction on the customer “is not reasonably related to the offences of which he was convicted or to his rehabilitation.” A California appellate court agreed with the customer’s lawyer, explaining, “It is quite apparent that the purpose of the probation condition here is to prevent the customer from encountering the property manager at one of the places at which she is employed…. The condition here is so broad that it is completely unrelated to [the customer’s] rehabilitation. There is absolutely nothing in the record to suggest that [the customer] will commit crimes in the shopping center or even that he is likely to encounter the property manager there…. In short, the condition is excessive and unduly burdensome in relation to its purpose; simply put, it far exceeds the scope of its stated purpose.” The court therefore ruled that the condition that the lower court imposed preventing the customer from entering the shopping center premises and its parking lot be overturned. (The People v. Dominguez, 2012 WL 6605005 [Cal.App. 6 Dist.]) Decision: December 2013 Published: December 2013