Metz v. State

George Metz went to the Paulding County Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Facility to film its operations for his YouTube channel. He crossed a marked guard line, and both facility guards and sheriff's deputies repeatedly told him to leave, but he refused. He was arrested and convicted of loitering near inmates and obstructing an officer. Before trial, Metz argued that the loitering statute, which bars standing around where inmates are kept after being told to stop, was too vague to fairly warn him his conduct was illegal and gave police too much discretion to enforce it unfairly. He also argued the trial judge should have told the jury that the First Amendment protected his right to film there. The Supreme Court of Georgia rejected both arguments, holding the statute's words had ordinary, understandable meanings that clearly covered what Metz did, and that the facility was not the kind of public space where the First Amendment right he invoked applied.

OCGA § 42-5-17, as applied to Metz, was not unconstitutionally vague because the terms 'stand,' 'desist,' and 'where inmates are kept' have ordinary meanings that gave Metz fair warning and gave officers adequate enforcement standards; the trial court also properly refused a First Amendment jury instruction because the cited case did not apply to a nonpublic forum like a correctional facility.

The ruling confirms that Georgia's decades-old loitering-near-inmates law can be enforced against people, including citizen journalists, who refuse to leave marked guard lines at jails and treatment facilities after being warned, and clarifies that filming rights recognized elsewhere do not automatically extend to such secure government properties.

Affirmed

1. The court applied the void-for-vagueness doctrine, which requires a criminal statute to give ordinary people fair warning of forbidden conduct and to give police clear enough standards to prevent arbitrary enforcement.
2. Because Metz raised only an as-applied challenge (arguing the law was unclear as it applied to his specific conduct, not that it was unclear in every possible use), the court looked only at whether the statute's terms clearly covered what Metz actually did.
3. Reviewing dictionaries from around 1903 when the statute was passed, the court found that 'stand' meant to cease moving and 'desist' meant to stop, and concluded a reasonable person would understand that refusing officers' repeated orders to leave the guard line was exactly the conduct the law forbade.
4. The court also found that a warning sign at the facility's entrance put visitors on notice that inmates were kept within the marked guard line, so Metz could not claim confusion about where the restricted area began.
5. On the jury-instruction issue, the court applied an abuse-of-discretion standard (asking only whether the trial judge's ruling fell within a reasonable range of choices) and found the requested First Amendment charge relied on a filming-rights case that only applies in public forums, not in a secure correctional facility, which courts treat as a nonpublic forum with more government control over speech.

• loitering statute
• void for vagueness
• First Amendment
• correctional facility guard line
• filming police