Tells Judge He’s Sentencing Her To Death, Says She’s Been Naked For Four Days
photo via PhoenixFeeley.com
Fire breathing topless activist Phoenix Feeley told Spring Lake Municipal Court Judge George Pappas that he was sentencing her to death by giving her the option of serving 16 days in the Monmouth County Correctional Institution or paying a $816.oo fine for going topless in Spring Lake in 2008, according to a report on NJ.com. Pappas gave Feeley credit for the four days she’s been incarcerated since she surrendered in Spring Lake on Monday.
“I refuse to pay a fine for an act that is legal for a man but is illegal for a woman,” 33-year-old artist Phoenix Feeley told Spring Lake Municipal Court Judge George Pappas via teleconference from the Monmouth County Correctional Institution in Freehold Township on Thursday morning.
Feeley was arrested twice in the same day in 2008 while sunbathing in Spring Lake.
Authorities charged her with violating an ordinance banning public nudity. Feeley argued that going topless was not the same as going nude, and that women, like men, should be able to bare their chests in public.
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Posted: August 8th, 2013 | Author: Art Gallagher | Filed under: Crime, Crime and Punishment, Monmouth County Sheriff's Office | Tags: Jill Coccaro, Judge George Pappas, Monmouth County Correctional Institution, Phoenix Feeley, Spring Lake, Topless, topless bathing, Toplessness | 2 Comments »
“Restrictions on the exposure of the female breast are supported by the important governmental interest in safeguarding the public’s moral sensibilities,” the two-judge New Jersey Appeals Court panel.
A New Jersey Appeals Court ruled yesterday that women must keep their shirts on in public in order to safeguard the public’s moral sensibilites, according to The Star Ledger.
The plantiff, Phoenix Feeley, is appealing.
I must have been absent the day they taught moral sensibilities in Constitutional Law. I think the judges should have made up different reason: If we let Phoenix Feeley go topless, we’d have to let Snooki do it, and that would create all kinds of public safety issues.
New Jersey’s public employees pension system offends my moral sensibilities. Let’s take a poll. If the majority of the public agrees with me, let’s see the judges rule their own pensions unconstitutional.
Feeley, whose real name is Jill Coccaro, sued New York City in 2005 because she was arrested while topless in the Big Apple. New York’s top court had ruled years earlier that men and women have equal rights to bare their breasts. Feeley collected $29,000. In 2008 she came to Spring Lake and tried to score again.
Ms. Phoenix, as she is known professionally, is the fire eating and breathing founder of NYC ALL STAR CIRCUS & FREE IGNITION.
She commented to the Ledger:
“In America, the land of the free and where equality reins free, a woman can’t take off her shirt but a man can,” she said. “In another country, a woman can’t take a scarf off her face without getting stoned to death. What’s so different about the two?”
Stoning to death. That’s the difference.
Before appealing, Feeley should commission a poll to find if bare breast really do offend the public’s moral sensibilities. If not, challenge the appellate court’s ruling on the facts.
Posted: September 16th, 2011 | Author: Art Gallagher | Filed under: NJ Courts | Tags: Jill Coccaro, Phoenix Feeley, Topless | 6 Comments »