Digitus Impudicus: The Middle Finger and the Law - Wired

1406 University of California, Davis [Vol. 41:1403
could be prosecuted for using the middle finger gesture under Texas
law if the gesture accompanied “‘road rage’ or reckless driving.” 8
After making an “internationally recognized obscene gesture” in a
photograph taken by Brazilian immigration officials, an American
Airlines pilot arriving from Miami was arrested, taken to federal court,
and fined. 9 Apparently the pilot’s gesture was designed to protest a
new Brazilian regulation requiring all incoming U.S. visitors to be
fingerprinted and photographed. 10
At the conclusion of a sentencing hearing, as he was being shackled
and handcuffed by prison guards, criminal defendant Timothy
Mitchell turned to the sentencing judge, raised his hands, and gave the
middle finger gesture to the judge. 11 The outraged judge held Mitchell
in contempt and sentenced him to five years in prison, with the
sentence to run consecutively with the fifteen-year sentence for felony
theft he had just received. 12 Two weeks later, the judge reduced
Mitchell’s contempt sentence to five months and twenty-nine days. 13
In August 2000, an Erie, Pennsylvania high school principal flipped
the bird and said “Shoot this!” to reporters questioning her about an
alleged incident involving a gun. 14 In Thailand, a fifty-year-old man
allegedly shot and killed a forty-one-year-old German, who had
displayed his middle finger to the shooter. 15 Both a Pennsylvania state
court 16 and an Arkansas federal court 17 dismissed criminal charges
against individuals who had given the finger in public; the Arkansas
federal judge ruled that the gesture was “protected as ‘free speech’
8 Coggin, 123 S.W.3d at 91-92.
9 Brazil Fines ‘Obscene’ US Pilot, BBC NEWS, Jan. 15, 2004,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3397183.stm. Three weeks later, a New York
banker was fined $17,200 for giving the finger to a camera when he was being
fingerprinted and photographed at a Brazilian airport. See Lisa Fleisher, Bird-Brained
Banker Busted in Brazil Spat, DAILY NEWS (N.Y.), Feb. 8, 2004, at 28.
10 See Brazil Fines ‘Obscene’ US Pilot, supra note 9 (stating that diplomatic tensions
between United States and Brazil were high at the time, because United States had
recently imposed similar requirements on Brazilian citizens entering United States).
The airline and the pilot subsequently apologized. Id.
11 Mitchell v. State, 580 A.2d 196, 198 (Md. 1990).
12 Id.
13 Id.
14 Chuck Shepherd, News of the Weird: For the Odds, Here’s Jiminy the Greek,
ORLANDO WKLY., Oct. 25, 2000, available at http://www.orlandoweekly.com/
columns/story.asp?id=1948.
15 Id.
16 Pennsylvania v. Kelly, 758 A.2d 1284, 1288 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2000).
17 Nichols v. Chacon, 110 F. Supp. 2d 1099, 1110 (W.D. Ark. 2000).