October 24, 2017
A Pennsylvania judge has reversed a teenage boy's disorderly conduct conviction for recording a fight at his middle school.
Superior Court Judge H. Geoffrey Moulton Jr. wrote in his ruling on Monday that while the court didn't condone the behavior of the boy or his classmates, "evidence before the trial court was insufficient to prove that (he) created a hazardous or physically offensive condition."
According to court records, in May 2016, the then-14-year-old boy, identified only by the initials N.M.C., recorded a fight between two other male students in the boy's bathroom at Dubois Area Middle School, Clearfield County.
N.M.C. sent the video to his girlfriend and another student but refused to send it to a third student who requested to see it.
After learning of the fight, assistant principal Michael Maholtz obtained the video through the boy's girlfriend.
N.M.C. initially said he had witnessed the fight but didn't take the video, however, he later admitted to recording the fight.
The boy was cited for disorderly conduct. N.M.C. appealed to the Common Pleas Court and testified on his own behalf, saying he didn't plan on recording the video in advance, didn't publish it on social media and only recorded it to prove he wasn't involved in the fight.
But the court sided with the state, concluding that recording the video was considered disorderly conduct because it created a "hazardous condition" by promoting and encouraging fighting.
Moulton, however, threw out the conviction in Monday's ruling, saying the state had stretched "the disorderly conduct statute too far."
"The trial court posits that because N.M.C. knew the initial two recipients could have further disseminated his video, N.M.C. knew that the video could have incited other students to fight," Moulton wrote.
"The Commonwealth’s evidence, however, only shows that N.M.C. disseminated the video to two other students via text message. The Commonwealth did not present the testimony of those recipients, let alone any evidence that they were personally offended by the video’s contents or that they even considered further dissemination"
The Superior Court decision voids N.M.C.'s sentence of 90 days probation, 35 days of community service and a $100 fine.
