A Florida man says his rights were violated after he was arrested for sporting an “I Eat Ass” sticker while driving his Chevrolet pick up truck.
Dillon Shane Webb, 23, was pulled over and ultimately arrested by a deputy with the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office after the deputy spotted his “I Eat Ass” sticker while patrolling Highway 90 in Columbia, Florida.
Assistant State Attorney John Foster Durrett wrote that all charges against Dillon Shane Webb have been dropped.
The letter explained how Webb’s sticker claiming “I Eat Ass” is indeed protected by the First Amendment.
“Having evaluated the evidence through the prism of Supreme Court precedent it is determined the Defendant has a valid defense to be raised under the First Amendment of our United States Constitution.”
“Given such, a jury would not convict under these facts,” Durrett wrote on May 9 in a letter to the Columbia Sheriff’s Office.
Dashcam video, seen above, from Webb’s May 5 arrest shows the deputy explaining to Webb the reason for pulling him over was due to “the derogatory sticker” on the rear window of his truck.
“How is it derogatory?” Webb asks the deputy.
“How is it not derogatory?” he asks in response.
The deputy then explains that he has four kids and if one were to ask him “what eating ass meant,” he would be upset.
“What you have in the back of your truck is a misdemeanor in the state of Florida,” he says before issuing Webb a citation.
However, after Webb refused to remove one S from the sticker at the deputy’s request so it would read “I Eat As” instead, he was arrested.
The deputy attempted to claim the sticker violated Florida state statute 847.011, which deals with distributing or possessing obscene material.
He can also be heard in the video asking a supervisor if he can charge Webb with “resisting” for refusing to modify the sticker upon request.
“Is that not resisting?” he asks a supervisor, dash cam video shows.
Webb’s attorney Andrew Bonderud, who has represented PINAC in the past, said he is now considering a “number of potential claims” against the sheriff’s office.
“Now we transition from defense to offense,”” Bonderud told Orlando Weekly.
“The First Amendment was our defense. What is Sheriff Hunter’s defense? We will find out!”
The sticker did not fulfill the rigorously applied standard to be deemed obscene, which usually involves something pornographic.
“[The sticker] could be a euphemism for a number of things,” Bonderud said.
“The bottom line is he and his friends thought it would be funny and he shouldn’t end up in jail for making a joke,” Bonderud told BuzzFeed, acknowledging Webb’s style of free speech was “unique.”
“I think it was brave of him to refuse to take down what he thought was protected free speech,” he added.
“I think it showed courage in his part.”
Watch dashcam footage from the stop above.