Anti-abortion pastor's convictions overturned

[alp227]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(08-26) 18:24 PDT OAKLAND -- An Alameda County court panel has overturned an anti-abortion pastor's convictions for illegally approaching patients outside an Oakland clinic, saying a judge's flawed instructions could have allowed jurors to find him guilty for conduct that was legal.

Walter Hoye of Union City, a pastor at a Berkeley church, was the first person convicted under a 2008 Oakland ordinance that created an 8-foot "bubble" around patients entering reproductive health clinics. The law prohibited knowingly entering that zone to harass a client or offer counseling without the person's consent.

A Superior Court judge sentenced Hoye to 30 days in jail in March 2009 after he refused a probation condition that would have required him to stay 100 yards from the Family Planning Specialists Medical Group at Second and Webster streets.

Hoye served his jail term while appealing his two misdemeanor convictions. He has also challenged the ordinance in federal court, where a judge upheld it in August 2009.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/26/BAVU1F44JL.DTL

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What? An anti-abortion church in BERKELEY? The same Berkeley with socialist pinko super-environmentalist college students farther to the left wing than the Democratic Party?

Still, this pastor should've accepted probation rather than jail time. I can't believe that he was willing to go to jail to exercise his supposed power over women.

[derby378]

1. That's because he's got some fellow preachers to answer to...

If he didn't fight this, it would cause him to lose face among his peers.

It's like a member of the Bloods deciding he really doesn't want to go gang-banging anymore. That usually doesn't end very well.