Per Curiam.
Appellant Palmer was convicted by a jury of violating the City of Euclid’s “suspicious person ordinance,” that is, of being
“[a]ny person who wanders about the streets or other public ways or who is found abroad at late or unusual hours in the night without any visible or lawful business and who does not give satisfactory account of himself.”
He was fined $50 and sentenced to 30 days in jail. The County Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment and appeal to the Supreme Court of Ohio was dismissed “for the reason that no substantial constitutional question exists herein.” We noted probable jurisdiction. 397 U. S. 1073 (1970).
We reverse the judgment against Palmer because the ordinance is so vague and lacking in ascertainable standards of guilt that, as applied to Palmer, it failed to give “a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden . . . United States v. Harriss, 347 U. S. 612, 617 (1954).
The elements of the crime defined by the ordinance apparently are (1) wandering about the streets or being abroad at late or unusual hours; (2) being at the time without visible or lawful business; and (3) failing to give a satisfactory explanation for his presence on the streets. Palmer, in his car, was seen late at night in a parking lot. A female left his car and entered by the front door an adjoining apartment house. Palmer then pulled onto the street, parked with his lights on, and used a two-way radio. He was not armed. He said he had just let off a friend. He was then arrested. At the station he gave three different addresses for himself and said he did not know his friend’s name or where she was going when she left his car. Palmer could reasonably be charged with knowing that he was on the streets at a late or unusual hour and that denying knowledge of his friend’s identity and claiming multiple addresses amounted to an unsatisfactory explanation under the ordinance. But in our view the ordinance gave insufficient notice to the average person that discharging a friend at an apartment house and then talking on a car radio while parked on the street was enough to show him to be “without any visible or lawful business.” Insofar as this record reveals, everything appellant did was quite visible and there is no suggestion whatsoever that what he did was unlawful under local, state, or federal law. If his conduct nevertheless satisfied the being-without-visible-or-lawful-business element of the ordinance, as the state courts must have held, it is quite unreasonable in our view to charge him with notice that such would be the construction of the ordinance. “The underlying principle is that no man shall be held criminally responsible for conduct which he could not reasonably understand to be proscribed.” United States v. Harriss, supra, at 617; Bouie v. Columbia, 378 U. S. 347 (1964); Wright v. Georgia, 373 U. S. 284 (1963).
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Ohio is reversed.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Harlan concurs in the result.
The ordinance seemingly requires a “business” purpose to be on the streets. But it seems irrational to construe the ordinance as permitting only visible and lawful commercial activities on the streets, thus in effect converting the ordinance into a curfew with exceptions for lawful commercial conduct. Neither the lower court nor appellee city suggests that the ordinance should be construed in this manner or that anyone would expect that it would be so construed.
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the bases on which the Supreme Court rested its decision with regard to the legal provision that the Court considered in the case. Consider "judicial review (national level)" if the majority determined the constitutionality of some action taken by some unit or official of the federal government, including an interstate compact. Consider "judicial review (state level)" if the majority determined the constitutionality of some action taken by some unit or official of a state or local government. Consider "statutory construction" for cases where the majority interpret a federal statute, treaty, or court rule; if the Court interprets a federal statute governing the powers or jurisdiction of a federal court; if the Court construes a state law as incompatible with a federal law; or if an administrative official interprets a federal statute. Do not consider "statutory construction" where an administrative agency or official acts "pursuant to" a statute, unless the Court interprets the statute to determine if administrative action is proper. Consider "interpretation of administrative regulation or rule, or executive order" if the majority treats federal administrative action in arriving at its decision.Consider "diversity jurisdiction" if the majority said in approximately so many words that under its diversity jurisdiction it is interpreting state law. Consider "federal common law" if the majority indicate that it used a judge-made "doctrine" or "rule; if the Court without more merely specifies the disposition the Court has made of the case and cites one or more of its own previously decided cases unless the citation is qualified by the word "see."; if the case concerns admiralty or maritime law, or some other aspect of the law of nations other than a treaty; if the case concerns the retroactive application of a constitutional provision or a previous decision of the Court; if the case concerns an exclusionary rule, the harmless error rule (though not the statute), the abstention doctrine, comity, res judicata, or collateral estoppel; or if the case concerns a "rule" or "doctrine" that is not specified as related to or connected with a constitutional or statutory provision. Consider "Supreme Court supervision of lower federal or state courts or original jurisdiction" otherwise (i.e., the residual code); for issues pertaining to non-statutorily based Judicial Power topics; for cases arising under the Court's original jurisdiction; in cases in which the Court denied or dismissed the petition for review or where the decision of a lower court is affirmed by a tie vote; or in workers' compensation litigation involving statutory interpretation and, in addition, a discussion of jury determination and/or the sufficiency of the evidence.