State v. Johnson

This criminal case presents a question that lies at the intersection between Oregon’s constitutional protection of free expression and an Oregon statute that punishes abusive or insulting speech that is calculated to produce a violent response. The Court of Appeals held that ORS 166.065(l)(a)(B), the abusive speech provision of the criminal harassment statute, does not, on its face, violate the free expression protections in Article !, section 8, of the Oregon Constitution, 1 and that the statute also is not unconstitutional as applied to defendant’s conduct in this case. State v. Johnson,…