> you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading.
Does it alarm you at all that the responses you're getting consist of (1) the suggestion that you're not able to read past the 14th word in a sentence, and (2) the observation "I don't see how anyone could say that with a straight face"?
> Can you break it down for me?
The statute is written very clearly on this point. It states two requirements for the offense to be committed; there is a state-of-mind requirement and an actual-conduct requirement. Both elements must be satisfied.
The actual-conduct requirement is satisfied by any one of three prongs (of which I quoted only the first two, because I didn't think there was a reasonable argument that public heroin use might satisfy the third). There appears to be very little dispute about its structure.
The state-of-mind requirement is satisfied by any one of two prongs. It states:
> A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with purpose to cause public inconvenience, [14] annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he or she...
For your convenience, I've marked the position following the 14th word in the sentence. Your argumentation so far has relied very heavily on pretending the words following that position do not exist. But they do.
Continuing from that point, we see that "public inconvenience" is not part of the necessary state of mind. Someone who intends to commit disorderly conduct may also do so with the purpose to cause public annoyance or public alarm. And more importantly, there is no intentionality requirement at all; the necessary state of mind is possessed by anyone "recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm". This prong is obviously satisfied by anyone who is high on heroin in public.
We can represent the structure of the statute very easily in Python-like pseudocode:
if ( defendant.intended_public_alarm()
or
defendant.recklessly_risked_public_alarm() )
and
defendant.actually_caused_public_alarm() ):
# the offense has been committed; check whether it's a
# violation or a misdemeanor
You're arguing that whenever intended_public_alarm returns False, the overall statement will also evaluate to False, which suggests a very alarming inability to understand Boolean logic. Or, of course, an inability to see words that occur after the 14th position in a sentence. But there is no good-faith reading of the statute that could be argued to support your view.
Do you seriously intend to argue that the state-of-mind element is meant to include these four categories?
1. People with the purpose to cause public inconvenience;
2. People with the purpose to cause public annoyance;
3. People with the purpose to cause public alarm;
4. People with the purpose to recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm.
And that, leaving aside the gross ungrammaticality of category 4, the four categories were strung together in parallel in a list with the structure "a, b or c or d"?