## Facts

- Christine Jones attended the 1991 Pegasus Parade in Louisville during Derby Week, near a red-lined safety zone around the judges’ stand.
- A police officer received a complaint that Jones was shouting obscenities at the military components of the parade in the presence of children.
- The officer told Jones the language was impermissible in that setting and ordered her to move out of the designated safety zone.
- Jones refused to move and directed an obscenity at the officer.
- Jones was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct under KRS 525.060(1)(b) (making unreasonable noise) and KRS 525.060(1)(d) (creating a hazardous or physically offensive condition by an act serving no legitimate purpose).
- The jury was instructed it could convict only if Jones, with the required intent or wantonness, either made unreasonable noise or created a hazardous or physically offensive condition; the jury returned a general guilty verdict.
- The district court entered judgment of conviction; the circuit court affirmed; the court of appeals reversed on the view that the conduct was protected speech; the Supreme Court of Kentucky granted discretionary review.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was sufficient to support a disorderly conduct conviction under KRS 525.060(1)(b) and/or KRS 525.060(1)(d) given the general verdict.
2. Whether applying KRS 525.060 to Jones’s conduct constituted an unconstitutional content-based restriction on protected speech.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Kentucky reversed the court of appeals and affirmed the district court’s judgment of conviction, reinstating the guilty verdict.
- The court held the case was not solely about speech content; it also involved the manner, location, and circumstances of Jones’s conduct.
- The court concluded the evidence permitted a rational jury to find either “unreasonable noise” under subsection (b) or creation of a “hazardous or physically offensive condition” serving no legitimate purpose under subsection (d).
- The court rejected the claim that the conviction rested on impermissible viewpoint discrimination, treating the application of the statute as regulation of disruptive public conduct rather than suppression of a message.

## Legal Principles

- “Unreasonable noise” under KRS 525.060(1)(b) is evaluated in context, including time, place, nature, and purpose of the noise; a jury may consider volume and surrounding circumstances, even when the noise consists of speech.
- A disorderly conduct prosecution may be constitutional when it targets disruptive conduct in a public place under content-neutral standards, rather than punishing a speaker’s viewpoint.
- A general verdict may stand when the evidence supports conviction under any of the charged statutory alternatives submitted to the jury.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Jones’s disorderly conduct conviction because the evidence allowed a finding that her loud, profane yelling in a crowded parade setting and refusal to leave a designated safety zone constituted disorderly conduct under at least one statutory theory, without imposing a content-based restraint on protected expression.


Commonwealth v. Jones, 880 S.W.2d 544 (Ky. 1994)