Statist idiocy in Iowa

Some statist idiots in Iowa, including police officers, the state Attorney General’s office, prosecutors, and a District Judge, got it into their deluded minds that the front porch of a person’s private home is actually a public place.

Your front porch is a public place because it is “plainly accessible and visible to any passers-by,” they reasoned. So they prosecuted a woman for public intoxication, i.e., the “crime” of being intoxicated on her own front porch.  

Police responded to a domestic dispute at the home, questioned the lady as she stood on her front steps, and insisted that she take a breathalyzer test which indicated that she was drunk.  So they arrested and charged her with being drunk in a public place together with domestic assault, (a count which was later dropped), and hauled her off to the jail.

The prosecutor’s office brought her to trial for her “crime” and a district judge convicted her despite her contention that her front porch cannot reasonably be construed to be a public place for the purpose of charging her with public intoxication.  

On appeal, the Iowa Supreme Court agreed with the obvious. The lady enjoyed a right to be drunk on the front porch of her own private home. She should never have been arrested, charged, brought to trial and convicted of this dubious “crime.”

"If the front stairs of a single-family residence are always a public place, it would be a crime to sit there calmly on a breezy summer day and sip a mojito, celebrate a professional achievement with a mixed drink of choice, or even baste meat on the grill with a bourbon-infused barbeque sauce — unless one first obtained a liquor license. We do not think the legislature intended Iowa law to be so heavy-handed," said the court, thus putting to a merciful end this ridiculous episode of... statist idiocy in Iowa.