[sumy23]

Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re seeing. The law says “purpose to cause” and then lists two things joined by an OR clause. But you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading. Can you break it down for me?

[asveikau]

If people here, in a place where many people write logic for a living, cannot parse simple logic out of a statue, imagine how a judge or a jury would do it.

I feel like often people in criminal justice do not understand meaning or intent of a statue and wing it, often slanting towards the side of punishing defendants. The law doesn't matter when your goal is to lock people up.

[sumy23]

Maybe… however in the debate of this law, one side is saying “the law says you need purpose to cause” and the other side is saying “no it doesn’t. If you could read more than 14 words you would know that.”

I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter.

[dragonwriter]

> however in the debate of this law, one side is saying “the law says you need purpose to cause” and the other side is saying “no it doesn’t. If you could read more than 14 words you would know that.”

> I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter

Now, I decided not spend more time and money on law school about half way through when I decided I’d rather stay in technology, but I don't see how anyone can argue with a straight face that the mental state requirement “with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof” (emphasis added) fails to apply to people recklessly causing a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm just as much a to those acting with purpose to cause such inconvenience, annoyance, and alarm.

[thaumasiotes]

> I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter.

I like to think that an objective observer might read the statute before deciding which argument he thought was more compelling. Certainly a lawyer would.

[dragonwriter]

> The law says “purpose to cause” and then lists two things joined by an OR clause.

No, you missed the other “or”

it says “with purpose to cause ... or recklessly creating the risk thereof” and then has the two things connected by the other “or” clause.

The argument is that voluntary use of heroin is recklessly creating the risk of public inconvenience, not that it is done with purpose to cause it.

[thaumasiotes]

> you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading.

Does it alarm you at all that the responses you're getting consist of (1) the suggestion that you're not able to read past the 14th word in a sentence, and (2) the observation "I don't see how anyone could say that with a straight face"?

> Can you break it down for me?

The statute is written very clearly on this point. It states two requirements for the offense to be committed; there is a state-of-mind requirement and an actual-conduct requirement. Both elements must be satisfied.

The actual-conduct requirement is satisfied by any one of three prongs (of which I quoted only the first two, because I didn't think there was a reasonable argument that public heroin use might satisfy the third). There appears to be very little dispute about its structure.

The state-of-mind requirement is satisfied by any one of two prongs. It states:

> A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with purpose to cause public inconvenience, [14] annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he or she...

For your convenience, I've marked the position following the 14th word in the sentence. Your argumentation so far has relied very heavily on pretending the words following that position do not exist. But they do.

Continuing from that point, we see that "public inconvenience" is not part of the necessary state of mind. Someone who intends to commit disorderly conduct may also do so with the purpose to cause public annoyance or public alarm. And more importantly, there is no intentionality requirement at all; the necessary state of mind is possessed by anyone "recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm". This prong is obviously satisfied by anyone who is high on heroin in public.

We can represent the structure of the statute very easily in Python-like pseudocode:

   if ( defendant.intended_public_alarm()
        or
        defendant.recklessly_risked_public_alarm() )
       and
       defendant.actually_caused_public_alarm() ):
     # the offense has been committed; check whether it's a
     # violation or a misdemeanor

You're arguing that whenever intended_public_alarm returns False, the overall statement will also evaluate to False, which suggests a very alarming inability to understand Boolean logic. Or, of course, an inability to see words that occur after the 14th position in a sentence. But there is no good-faith reading of the statute that could be argued to support your view.

Do you seriously intend to argue that the state-of-mind element is meant to include these four categories?

1. People with the purpose to cause public inconvenience;

2. People with the purpose to cause public annoyance;

3. People with the purpose to cause public alarm;

4. People with the purpose to recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm.

And that, leaving aside the gross ungrammaticality of category 4, the four categories were strung together in parallel in a list with the structure "a, b or c or d"?