08/19/2000
Housewife jailed for advocating Official English
Case tests city’s speech ordinance
By Michael G. Walsh, The Muskegon Chronicle, Saturday, August 12, 2000MANISTEE … It was a little past 11 a.m. on an August day in 1998 when [Janice] Barton, 45, was leaving the Peppermill Restaurant in this Lake Michigan shoreline community with her mother and daughter. As Barton and her family tried to make their way through the crowd, a man — in Spanish — asked his wife to make room for them.
Barton, who does not understand Spanish, told her mother: "I wish these damned ’spics' would learn to speak English."
Carol Benitez, one of the Spanish speakers and an off-duty Manistee County Sheriff’s deputy, followed Barton outside and copied her license plate number …
Almost two weeks later, Barton was charged with disturbing the peace. But when she appeared in court Oct. 13, 1998, Barton was charged with "insulting conduct in a public place." In court that December, Barton testified that she thinks immigrants should speak English when in the United States … .
The district court jury agreed with the judge that Barton’s words were "fighting words" — not free speech — and convicted her of the misdemeanor.
… . The housewife was sent to jail for 45 days, but released four days later after her attorney worked out an unusual deal: The jury verdict would be vacated and she would plead guilty and be freed — as long as she dropped all appeal rights …
(Nevertheless, Ms. Barton is now appealing. The full story is currently available at https://mu.mlive.com/news/index.ssf?/
news/stories/20000812mfighti055.frm)
[1] Note there is no suggestion that Ms. Barton (female! middle-aged!! accompanied by her daughter and mother!!!) actually attacked or even threatened to attack anyone.
[2] In fact, amazingly, everyone agrees that any potential violence would come from the Hispanics. The advocates of Ms. Barton’s conviction actually assert this:
"John Roy Castillo, former director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights and the Detroit Human Rights Department [whatever that is], said Barton’s comment not only was offensive, it likely could have sparked a fight … . "I’m nonviolent, but I might have confronted her and who knows the personality of that person," said Castillo, who is of Mexican descent."
In other words, because today’s immigrants come from a violent political culture with no tradition of free speech, an American must go to jail.
August 19, 2000
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.