Opinion ID: 1196196
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Heading: Definition of Threat Under Section 18-8-706

Text: Earlier Colorado cases address the meaning of threat. In People v. Hines, we held, in the context of our felony menacing statute, that the meaning of threat is a statement of purpose or intent to cause injury or harm to the person, property, or rights of another, by the commission of an unlawful act. 780 P.2d 556, 559 (Colo.1989). In Schott v. People, we defined threat in the context of a theft by threat statute as a declaration of purpose or intention to work injury to the person, property, or rights of another by the commission of an unlawful act. 174 Colo. 15, 18, 482 P.2d 101, 102 (1971) (citing Black's Law Dictionary 1651 (4th ed.1968)). It is to be presumed that a legislature is cognizant of and adopts the construction which prior judicial decisions have placed on particular language when such language is employed in subsequent legislation. Binkley v. People, 716 P.2d 1111, 1114 (Colo. 1986). Because the legislature provided no definition of threat under section 18-8-706, we presume that the legislature intended that the term have the meaning adopted by this court in earlier decisions such as Hines and Schott. In addition to our earlier cases and the presumption we make about the legislature's intent based on those cases, other sources define threat as a communication of an intention to commit harm through the commission of unlawful acts. Webster's Third New International Dictionary 2382 (1986), defines threat as: [An] expression of an intention to inflict loss or harm on another by illegal means and esp[ecially] by means involving coercion or duress of the person threatened. Black's Law Dictionary 1480 (6th ed.1990), defines threat as a declaration of an intention to injure another or his property by some unlawful act. [5] Although our caselaw, the presumption we make about the General Assembly's intent based on that caselaw, and the dictionary definition of threat all indicate that threat refers to the commission of illegal acts, we note that threat may be conceived of in a broader fashion, including expressions of intent to commit harm or injury through the commission of an act that is not necessarily illegal. For example, the extortion statute invalidated in Whimbush defined in a broad manner the threats proscribed. See 869 P.2d at 1247. The extortion statute defined the prohibited threats as including threats to confine, restrain, or cause economic or bodily injury to the threatened person, as well as threats to damage the property, economic well-being, or reputation of the threatened person, and this definition of threat encompassed a greater spectrum of speech than does the definition we supplied in earlier cases. See id.; see also, e.g., Black's Law Dictionary 1489 (7th ed.1999) (defining threat as a communicated intent to inflict harm or loss on another, without reference to the commission of unlawful acts); Webster's, supra, at 2382 (defining threat as an indication of something impending and [usually] undesirable or unpleasant and as an expression of an intention to inflict evil, injury, or damage on another); Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Inc. v. Blake, 417 Mass. 467, 631 N.E.2d 985, 990 (1994) (accepting definition of threat as the intentional exertion of pressure to make another fearful or apprehensive of injury or harm). Thus, we recognize that threat has several meanings, including some definitions that are broader than the one we have applied in our earlier cases. Although both the narrow and broad definitions of threat are reasonable interpretations of the term, if a statute is capable of alternative constructions, one of which is constitutional, then the constitutional interpretation must be adopted. People v. McBurney, 750 P.2d 916, 920 (Colo.1988). As we explain in our further discussions in subsection (c), infra, a definition of threat that limits the term to only those statements of intent to cause harm or injury through the commission of unlawful acts bolsters the statute's constitutionality. By defining threat in this fashion, we save the statute from overbreadth because the statute does not encompass a substantial amount of protected speech. In sum, Colorado caselaw defines threat and provides a basis for presuming that the General Assembly intended to use this definition, and we find support for this definition in other sources. Our analysis of the constitutionality of section 18-8-706 also suggests that threat should be interpreted in a narrow fashion. Thus, we construe threat in section 18-8-706 to mean an expression of an intent or statement of purpose to commit harm or injury to another's person, property, or rights through the commission of unlawful acts.