A Lynchburg, Va., man who cursed at several police officers shouldn't have been convicted for breach of the peace because his speech didn't amount to fighting words, a state appeals court has ruled.

At 1 a.m. on June 24, 1999, Brent David Marttila was confronted by three police officers over a vehicle registration problem. Marttila told the officers that he did not own the car in question.

An hour later, the officers saw Marttila exit the same vehicle. They then discovered that Marttila had lied to them about ownership of the car and that he had lived in the state for six months without obtaining a state driver's license or registration.

As the three officers approached Marttila, he cursed the officers, calling them "f------ pigs," "f------ jokes" and telling them that they "should be at a f------ doughnut shop."

The officers cited Marttila with violating a city breach-of-the-peace ordinance, which prohibits the "use of any violent abusive language" to another person that is "calculated to provide a breach of the peace."

Later that year, a state trial judge convicted Marttila, finding that "these were fighting words under the circumstances."

In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire defined fighting words as words which are likely by their very utterance to inflict injury, or which tend to incite the average person to immediate violence. The high court said that fighting words receive no First Amendment protection.

The Virginia Supreme Court had ruled that a state law similar to the Lynchburg ordinance was constitutional because it only applied to insults that are likely to "precipitate an immediate, forceful and violent reaction by a reasonable person."

Marttila appealed his conviction to the state appeals court. Last week, the state appeals court reversed the conviction in Marttila v. City of Lynchburg.

The appeals court quoted the 1987 Supreme Court decision City of Houston v. Hill for the proposition that "the First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers."

Marttila made no threatening gestures and only "expressed contempt for the officers in a general sense," the court ruled.

The appeals court concluded: "The evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to prove appellant's (Marttila's) statements had a direct tendency to provoke an immediate breach of the peace by reasonably trained police officers in the position of the officers to whom the remarks were addressed."