Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

October 25, 2007

Brooklyn resident Matthew Jones was arrested in June 2004 for literally doing nothing. He attracted the attention of a policeman while chatting on the sidewalk in New York City's Times Square.

It was after midnight, and both Matthew and his friends made a point of stepping aside to accommodate the occasional pedestrian. The policeman ordered Matthew to move from the sidewalk. When the puzzled man didn't immediately comply, he was arrested for ?disorderly conduct,? handcuffed, and taken to jail for the night.

The ?conduct? in this case was doing nothing. Nobody complained to the police officer that Jones and his friends posed an unreasonable impediment to people using the sidewalk. Jones pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, a plea he has since tried, without success, to revoke.

Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu notes that ?Full enforcement of every law on the books would put all of us in prison....? The fact that a man can be arrested for peacefully standing on a sidewalk validates Professor Wu's sobering point.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.