Three Richmond street preachers plan to keep using loudspeakers to spread their message, after a judge dismissed charges they violated the city noise ordinance.

Circuit Judge Richard D. Taylor Jr. yesterday ruled that police had charged the three under the wrong section of the ordinance.

The charges came out of two February incidents, one at the First Fridays art festival and the other in Shockoe Bottom.

The three, Matthew Ray, 25; James Craft, 28; and Ryan Walker, 24, are members of a Richmond evangelical group.

"They are entitled to the same rights of speech that others enjoy," said their attorney, Steve C. Taylor of the Chesapeake-based Christian Rights Ministries. He is not related to the judge.

The attorney had argued that charges under the city's general noise ordinance should be dismissed because other sections of the code deal specifically with using amplifiers for religious speech.

But he said he believes that section unconstitutionally constrains free speech rights.

"Christian speech can't be second-class speech," he said.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Alex Taylor, also unrelated to the judge or to the defendants' lawyer, warned that the members of the street-preaching group would be prosecuted under the code sections their lawyer mentioned if they continued amplifying their voices as much as they had been.

"The issue is how it's done. . . . The issue isn't religious preaching -- I'm a Christian," he said.

The code section the three were charged under bans unreasonably loud and disturbing noise. Violators can be punished by as much as six months in jail.

The section the judge ruled should apply states amplified religious speech and music cannot be audible above the level of conversational speech from more than 200 feet away. The section does not specify a penalty.

At yesterday's trial, police testified that the three men's loudspeaker at a First Fridays Artwalk could be heard more than a block away and was so loud that half a block away it drowned out ordinary conversation and radios.

Officer Robert Kleinholz said he saw one woman cover her ear as she walked past and noticed several people walking into the street or crossing to the other side to avoid the preaching.

Others from the preaching group resumed their speaking, without amplification, after police issued citations to Ray, Craft and Walker, said former Richmond officer Ashley Farlow.

In the Bottom on Feb. 22, Craft and Ray used megaphones to warn bar-goers they were going to hell, prompting several to threaten violence against the two, officer William House said.

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or dress@timesdispatch.com.