Washington v. State
Washington v. State
Opinion of the Court
"Defendants appeal from their convictions for disorderly conduct and from the 'denial of their motion for a new trial.
1. The State’s motion to dismiss is denied. See Rule 14 (e) of this Court, as of March 2, 1972.
2. Defendants were five high school students who were arrested and prosecuted under Code Ann. § 26-2605 for disrupting school by creating a disturbance. Two of the ■defendants were apparently attempting to organize a
3. The defendants contend that their conduct did riot in itself constitute a disturbance and therefore would not be an offense under the statute as construed in Fowler v. State, 93 Ga. App. 883 (93 SE2d 183). This would be true if the conduct prosecuted were the organizing activity. Like the distribution of pamphlets in Fowler, this would lead others to be disturbed only following a voluntary, cooperative act of their own. Here, however, the conduct which is the gist of the offense was "singing and shouting” which, by itself, would be a disturbance as it could not easily be ignored. For the same reason, the case of Tinker v. Des Moines Community School District, 393 U. S. 503 (89 SC 733, 21 LE2d 731), is not applicable. The conduct there was the wearing of black arm-bands which the court held to be a legitimate form of free expression, and did not involve order on the campus, a proper concern of the school authorities.
4. Most of defendants’ contentions involve subjects which • this court has no power to review, e.g., the credibility of witnesses, selective prosecution and conviction of only some of the group, and the question of using criminal sanctions in this situation. We can discover no Georgia case in which a student has been prosecuted under this statute or its predecessor (former Code Ann. § 26-6913).
Judgment affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.