Disorderly conduct is a “catch-all” crime that law enforcement uses to maintain public order when an individual engages in disruptive, offensive, or dangerous behavior in public. Many people believe disorderly conduct is about being drunk and disorderly in public. However, the law covers a wide range of conduct, some of which you assume are legal but trigger public annoyance or nuance.

While a disorderly conduct charge may not seem severe, you should take it very seriously because a guilty verdict could result in jail time and a criminal record. Here are various California minor violations categorized as disorderly conduct, their penalties, and the valid defenses you can raise to reduce or dismiss the charge.

Legal Definition of Disorderly Conduct Under PEN 647

California PEN 647 is the statute that prohibits disorderly conduct and outlines the offenses that fall under this category, along with their penalties. These offenses include:

Lewd or Lascivious Conduct

As per PEN 647a, it is a crime to solicit another person to participate in or to engage in dissolute behavior in public view, public space, or a location open to the public. Lewd or lascivious conduct entails touching your intimate parts or another party’s genitals for self-satisfaction, to annoy, or to offend others.

Solicitation or Participating in Prostitution

PEN 674(b) makes it a crime for you to solicit, agree to participate, or engage in sexual behavior or conduct in exchange for money, compensation, or something valuable. For purposes of PEN 647b, solicitation or prostitution happens when:

  • You participate in a prostitution act
  • Solicit prostitution
  • Agree to engage in prostitution

Engaging in or participating in a prostitution act means you intentionally had sexual intercourse or lewd conduct with another party and did so for money or another form of compensation. The law does not focus on your intent to break the law. It focuses on willful or deliberate behavior to engage in prostitution.

"Soliciting" means asking someone else to engage in an act of prostitution with the intent to commit a prostitution act. Solicitation happens if acts are showing clear intentions to participate in prostitution. Acts that do not amount to a violation of PEN 647b include nodding to a stranger, waving at a car, standing at a street corner with a miniskirt on, or being present in a location famous for prostitution. Additionally, the prosecutor must prove you agreed to engage in prostitution, planned on participating in a prostitution act, or engaged in an act to further a prostitution act, such as:

  • Making the agreed payment
  • Withdrawing cash from an ATM to make a payment
  • Driving to the location where the prostitution act was to happen
  • Ordering a customer who has agreed to the solicitation to undress

Panhandling

Under PEN 647c, it is a crime to accost someone in a public place to beg or solicit alms. Panhandling is the act of begging or soliciting money from members of the public in a disruptive or aggressive fashion.

Loitering in a Public Toilet

Under PEN 647d, it is unlawful to wander or loiter in a toilet accessible to the general public with the intent to engage or solicit a lewd act. Wandering on private property without consent or without a legitimate reason also constitutes disorderly conduct.

Unlawful Squatting

PEN 647e prohibits you from lodging in a building, structure, car, or place, private or public, without approval from the owner or individual charged with control of the place. Simply put, unauthorized habitation amounts to disorderly conduct.

Public Intoxication

PEN 647f prohibits you from being under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or a controlled substance, or a combination of the substances and alcohol, in a public setting such that you cannot exercise care for your safety or the safety of others, or you interfere with or prevent free use of public ways.

Other conduct grouped as disorderly conduct under PEN 647 includes the following:

  • Peeping into a private place or secretly filming another individual in private
  • Lingering in a private area with no legitimate reasons

A violation of PEN 647 is a misdemeanor. When found guilty of the charge, you will face no more than six months in county jail and/or a monetary court fine of at most $1,000.

If you cannot afford the court fine, the court can impose community service in place of a monetary fine.

Disturbing Peace

Another behavior categorized under disorderly conduct is disturbing the peace, outlined under PEN 415. Many people use "disorderly conduct" and "disturbing the peace" interchangeably, but the two are distinct. Disorderly conduct is a “catch-all” crime for various intrusive behaviors, including disturbing the peace. You disturb peace pursuant to PEN 415 when:

  1. You Participate in an Unlawful Fight in Public

It is illegal under California PEN 415(1) to deliberately or willfully fight or challenge someone else to a fight in public. Acting willfully means that you challenged a person to a fight or fought someone on purpose.

  1. You Made Unreasonable Noises

Another element the prosecutor must prove under PEN 415(2) is that you deliberately and maliciously made loud and unreasonable noise that disturbed other people. Acting maliciously means doing something to purposely wrong, annoy, or harm someone else.

The law requires that the unreasonable noise be clear, pose a threat of imminent violence, or be used to intentionally disrupt legal activities, rather than as a means of communication.

  1. You Utilized Offensive Words

Disturbing peace under PEN 415(3) requires the prosecutor to demonstrate that you utilized offensive words that were likely to trigger violence and that you made use of the words in public. Your words are deemed to be too likely to provoke or trigger violence if you make an utterance that is likely to cause someone to react violently. When you made the utterances, there was a clear and present danger that the person targeted by the statement would immediately react with violence.

Your intentions when you made the statement do not have to have been intended to cause violence for you to be guilty under this subsection. Nevertheless, the court will not convict you if you reasonably believed that your statements would not trigger an immediate violent reaction.

A PEN 415 violation in California is a wobblette, meaning prosecutors have discretion to file it as an infraction or a misdemeanor, depending on your criminal record and the circumstances of the case. As an infraction, the offense attracts a maximum fine of $250 and no jail term. As a misdemeanor, disturbing the peace attracts at most 90 days of jail confinement and/or no more than $400 in court fines.

If you disturb the peace in a college, university, or school area, you will face a direct misdemeanor charge pursuant to PEN 415.5. When convicted, you will face a fine of at most $400 and jail confinement for at most 90 days. When convicted for a second violation, you will face 10 to 180 days of jail incarceration and no more than $1,000 in court fines. A third conviction carries a sentence of 90 to 180 days in jail and/or a fine of no more than $1,000.

California Trespassing

Trespassing is another crime categorized as disorderly conduct. The offense is outlined under PEN 602 as gaining access to or remaining in another party’s property without consent to do so. Several activities amount to criminal trespass. These are:

  • Entering another person’s property with the intent to damage the property once inside
  • Accessing another party’s property with the intent to disrupt or obstruct routines in the property.
  • Accessing and remaining in a person’s property without their consent
  • Taking soil, stone, or dirt off another party’s property without their permission
  • Declining screening at a courthouse or airport

Many California trespass offenses are filed as misdemeanors. When found guilty, you will face at most six months of jail confinement and/or $1,000 in court fines. Additionally, the court can impose a misdemeanor or summary probation in place of jail confinement.

California Rioting

Another act that qualifies as disorderly conduct is rioting, which is defined under California PEN 404. Per the statute, rioting happens when at least two people, acting together without approval from the relevant authorities, willfully disturb the peace, use violence, or threaten to use violence when they possess the immediate power to act on the threats. You can only be guilty under this statute if you willingly engage in a riot or deliberately support rioters. The court will not convict you for simply being present in a location where a riot is happening.

Rioting is a misdemeanor violation. When convicted, you will face at most twelve months in county jail or no more than $1,000 in monetary court fines. However, in many cases, rioting does not result in jail time. Judges typically grant most defendants informal or misdemeanor probation rather than a jail sentence. The terms of the probation include avoiding crime and staying away from the riot area.

Failing to Disperse

PEN 416 makes it unlawful for at least two people disturbing the peace to decline to obey a lawful order by law enforcement to disperse. The law empowers public officials to disperse an assembly if they have probable cause that the assembly is illegal. The First Amendment safeguards your right to freedom of assembly. So, PEN 416 only applies to illegal assembly.

Prosecutors charge failing to disperse as a misdemeanor. When found guilty of the offense, you will face no more than six months of jail incarceration and victim restitution for any damages caused. Failing to disperse is a form of disorderly conduct, and you must take it seriously because a guilty verdict will result in jail time.

Legal Defenses for Disorderly Conduct

A conviction for acts prohibited by various laws categorized as disorderly conduct can result in jail confinement, hefty fines, and a criminal record. Therefore, when you face the charge, as light as it might sound, you should enlist the services of a competent criminal defense attorney to help you contest the charges. An experienced defense attorney will put up a spirited fight to have the charge reduced to an infraction to avoid jail time or have the entire case dismissed. The common legal defenses you can apply, depending on the facts of your case, are:

Your Conduct is Not Prohibited

Only acts prohibited under various laws constitute disorderly conduct. Therefore, if your specific act is protected by the First Amendment, such as freedom of assembly or speech, you are not guilty of disorderly conduct. Additionally, if the actions do not fit the legal definition of prohibited acts under the specific law, the court will not find you guilty. Your attorney can present evidence of the circumstances in the case that show your conduct was within the law.

You were Falsely Accused

You can present evidence in court to show that the charges against you are based on false allegations from an individual seeking revenge or acting out of jealousy or anger. For this defense strategy to hold, your attorney must prove that the crime did not happen.

You are a Victim of Misidentification

In many cases of disorderly conduct, such as rioting, failure to disperse, or situations where law enforcement is dealing with an emergency, it can be difficult to identify the actual perpetrators, leading to misidentification. If your charges are based on a misidentification, you can provide evidence that you were in another location and could not have committed the alleged crime or resemble the race or physical description of the actual perpetrator, but you did not commit the crime. You will need alibis and physical evidence, such as video or surveillance footage, to prove misidentification.

The Police Lacked Probable Cause

Arresting officers need probable cause to make an arrest or detain you. So, when law enforcement officers arrest you for an alleged violation of disorderly conduct statutes without probable cause, the arrest becomes unlawful. Any evidence acquired from the illegal arrest is inadmissible in court. Your attorney will file a motion to suppress evidence to have all the unlawfully acquired evidence dismissed. When this happens, the prosecutor will have a weak case, forcing them to reduce your charges or drop the case.

Find a Skilled Criminal Defense Attorney Near Me

If you face charges for disturbing the peace, rioting, public intoxication, trespassing, loitering, failure to disperse, or any other prohibited conduct that constitutes disorderly conduct, you should consult an experienced attorney to understand whether a conviction could result in jail time and other consequences. Although disorderly conduct offenses are rarely charged as felonies, you should take them seriously and hire an attorney to defend you.

At the Law Offices of Jonathan Franklin, we will explain your charges and evaluate facts to develop viable defenses for a fair outcome. Call us at 310-273-9600 to schedule a consultation in Los Angeles.