The conviction of Hendrix relied on a legal interpretation of her comments towards Sharmarke Omar, which were defined as “fighting words.”
Shiloh Hendrix, the mother who was convicted of disorderly conduct after saying the N-word towards a Somali man who egged her into saying it on camera, has appealed her case with the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
She is appealing her conviction of one count of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor. She was handed a sentence of 200 hours of community service and had to pay a $1,000 fine. Her defense attorney, Brian Karalus, filed the appeal on her behalf on July 30, per KMT3.
The appeal comes after critics, including the free speech advocacy group, the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression, have said that the conviction cannot be squared with First Amendment rights. The conviction of Hendrix relied on a legal interpretation of her comments towards Sharmarke Omar—the Somali TikTok user who was previously charged with sexual assault—which were defined as "fighting words."
The instruction given to the jury by Assistant Chief District Court Judge Christa M. Daily said that fighting words are "words that constitute personally offensive epithets that, when spoken to the ordinary person, under the particular circumstances of the case, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction or incite an immediate breach of the peace by those to whom such words are addressed," even if there is not violent reaction.
Critics pointed to the video, saying that the exchange between Omar and Hendrix was a heated argument, and that Omar even solicited Hendrix to use the term, thereby not falling under the category of "fighting words," which is a very limited legal exception.
FIRE said in an article in response to the conviction, “Unless the trial record contains some critical fact absent from public reporting, that conviction cannot stand under the First Amendment. The video merely shows a heated verbal exchange between Hendrix and Omar. No threats. No violence. Nothing beyond words. However much offense they caused, that simply does not justify the government imprisoning, fining, or otherwise punishing the speaker. A public argument does not become a crime because a speaker used a particular word.”
“Omar solicited Hendrix — who was walking away while carrying her child — to repeat the slur so he could capture it on video and shame her. She did so and then continued walking away. Nothing about the interaction suggests Hendrix’s words were likely to provoke an immediate violent response,” FIRE later added in their article.
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