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Bill penalizing funeral protesters advances PDF Print E-mail
Written by DeadGirl   
Sunday, 23 April 2006
Violators could get up to 6 months in jail
Friday, April 21, 2006
By Ed Anderson, Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- Protesters who intentionally disrupt a wake, funeral or burial could wind up in jail for up to six months for disturbing the peace, a House committee decided Thursday.

The House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice gave unanimous support to an unnumbered substitute bill by Rep. Francis Thompson, D-Delhi, and sent it to the House floor for debate.

Thompson's bill started out banning protests and picketing at funerals and wakes but was revised when attorneys said it might face challenges on constitutional grounds.

The bill is similar to Senate Bill 741 by Sen. Rob Marionneaux Jr., D-Livonia, which also would criminalize protests at funerals, wakes and burials, especially those for Louisiana service members killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The bills are designed to discourage protests by antiwar groups and conservative religious groups that say the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq are retribution for the nation's tolerance of gay people. Louisiana has not yet seen such protests.

Thompson's substitute bill, which also makes it a crime to block or obstruct access to a funeral home, church or cemetery, started out prohibiting anyone from engaging in "any utterance, gesture or display designed to outrage the sensibilities of a group attending a funeral, funeral home viewing, funeral procession, wake memorial service or burial."

However, Rep. Danny Martiny, R-Kenner, a lawyer and the committee chairman, said the bill's language was vague and could spur a legal challenge alleging free speech violations.

Rep. Donald Cazayoux, D-New Roads, agreed. "I think it is unconstitutional with this language in here," he said of the prohibition of any utterance or display offending the sensibilities of others.

"It is overly broad and vague," Cazayoux said.

"I don't think the First Amendment was designed to protect this sort of speech," Thompson said in rebuttal. "It's just not right. This is a good message to send. It is just a matter of time" before the protests crop up in Louisiana.

The bill was approved 8-4 after the panel stripped that provision from the bill and retained the language on blocking access to cemeteries, funeral homes and churches. But Thompson lobbied the panel to reconsider the bill to reinstate some of the language that had been stripped.

This time Thompson amended the bill to make the act of blocking access to a church, funeral home or cemetery an "intentional" act. He also deleted the language on offending the sensibilities of those attending a funeral and made offensive language, gestures or other actions at a funeral, wake or burial "intentional acts."

The panel then approved the bill without objection.

Thompson's bill calls for penalties of up to six months in jail, a $100 fine or both. Other violations of the disturbing-the-peace law call for up to 90 days in jail, a top fine of $100 or both.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1145601968266320.xml
 
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