City of Seattle v. Pullman

Defendant Ronny Gene Pullman was charged and convicted in both Seattle Municipal Court and on appeal in superior court with violation of a Seattle ordinance which prohibits accompanying a child during curfew hours.1

We find the ordinance unconstitutional on two grounds. It is first too vague, and due process is violated where persons of common intelligence must guess at its meaning at the peril of their liberty. It secondly is an invalid exercise of the city’s police power because it makes no distinction between conduct calculated to harm and that which is essentially innocent. By the language…