## Facts

- Jacksonville, Florida enforced a vagrancy ordinance that broadly criminalized categories such as “rogues and vagabonds,” “common night walkers,” “habitual loafers,” and “persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object.”
- Eight individuals were arrested and convicted under different subsections of the ordinance in five consolidated prosecutions.
- Four defendants were arrested early on a Sunday morning and charged with vagrancy for “prowling by auto”; their backgrounds included lawful employment, military service, and enrollment in education or job training.
- Two defendants were charged as “vagabonds.”
- One defendant was charged with “loitering” and “common thief,” and another was charged as a “common thief.”
- One defendant was charged with “disorderly loitering on street” and also charged with resisting arrest with violence.
- The prosecutions rested on conduct the Court characterized as often ordinary and generally innocent (e.g., being in public, walking, or driving without clear evidence of a specific crime).
- State courts affirmed the convictions or declined review; the Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether the vagrancy ordinance violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it failed to provide fair notice of what conduct was prohibited.
2. Whether the ordinance was unconstitutional because it encouraged arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement by granting excessive discretion to police.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed and held the ordinance void for vagueness under the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The Court concluded the ordinance failed to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of prohibited conduct.
- The Court held the ordinance authorized arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions by placing nearly unfettered discretion in the hands of police.
- The Court found the ordinance swept within its reach conduct that, by modern standards, is normally innocent.

## Legal Principles

- Due process requires criminal laws to give people of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what conduct is forbidden.
- A law is void for vagueness when its imprecise terms invite arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.
- Criminal prohibitions that function as catchall tools to arrest “undesirable” persons, rather than to define specific culpable conduct, violate due process.
- Preventive policing goals do not justify vague criminal prohibitions that substitute suspicion for clear legal standards.

## Conclusion

The Court invalidated Jacksonville’s vagrancy ordinance because its broad and archaic terms did not define prohibited conduct with sufficient clarity and instead enabled discretionary, discriminatory enforcement against otherwise innocent public behavior, violating due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.


Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972)