Man Goes to Trial in Case Alleging Sign Was Offensive : Courts: The Santa Clarita Valley resident says free speech entitled him to tape the note in the window of his van. It was aimed at a deputy who ticketed him.

After 20 months of legal skirmishing and name-calling, a Santa Clarita Valley businessman went on trial Monday for allegedly touching off a neighborhood war by placing a sign on his van with an offensive message directed at a sheriff’s deputy.

Jurors were selected in Newhall Municipal Court and a prosecutor delivered his opening statement in the case, which revolves around a sign that was taped to the back window of the van that Gary Shaw parked in front of his Elder View Drive home in Valencia.

Shaw, 34, is charged with a misdemeanor count of disturbing the peace by using offensive language.

What is uncontested in the trial is that after getting a speeding ticket near his home in August, 1990, Shaw took a marker to a Manila file folder, wrote a note to the sheriff’s deputy who gave him the ticket and taped it to his van.

Shaw, who owns a messenger service, has maintained in interviews since the incident that he wrote, “Deputy J. Banks can Suck my Duck.”

In his opening statement Monday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Noyes said evidence will show and witnesses will testify that Shaw actually wrote an off-color remark on the sign and later changed it to the word Duck when neighbors angrily objected.

To convict Shaw, Noyes will have to prove that neighbors had an “immediate violent reaction” to the sign on the van. He is expected to call neighbors of Shaw to testify about how they angrily argued with him over the sign.

Noyes told the 12 jurors that Shaw’s placement of the sign in the neighborhood created a volatile situation because most homeowners on Elder View Drive have children. He said children were asking parents what the sign meant.

“There are families on the street, young kids,” Noyes said. “A lot of passion was involved.”

Shaw’s attorney, Joseph C. Merkens, made no opening statement Monday.

Shaw has maintained that regardless of what was written on the sign, to punish him would be to violate his freedom of speech. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 90 days in jail.

In discussion with Judge Floyd Baxter outside the earshot of jurors, Merkens said complaints by neighbors were elicited by sheriff’s deputies who were angry because the sign on Shaw’s van was offensive to a fellow deputy.

“It’s not like the deputies were called to the scene,” Merkens said. “The deputies went out there to drum up charges against my client.”

The first witnesses in the case are expected to testify today.

The start of the trial ended numerous delays and disputes along the way. More than a year ago, a judge who was handling the case at the time called it a “turtle race” because of its slow movement.

One reason for the lengthy span of the misdemeanor case was Shaw’s refusal to accept plea-bargain offers from prosecutors that would have put him on probation. Shaw has said he would not plead to even a reduced charge and he vowed to fight the case as a freedom of speech issue.

“They are hoping I don’t have the time, the money or the initiative to carry this through,” he said last year, referring to prosecutors and deputies.

On Monday, he got his day in court.

“I am tickled pink,” he said. “It is no longer the district attorney or the deputies or the judges; it is now down to these 12 people. And anyone who looks at the facts will say, ‘Where’s the crime?’ ”