Opinion ID: 2151113
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Does construction of ch. 384 to effectuate the legislative intent deny to the defendant due process of law?

Text: Judicial correction of a criminal statute to effectuate legislative intent can create a variance between the text as printed and the statute as court construed. While appellant's claim that he is being denied due process is presented in a number of ways, the basic contention is that such variance between text and construction is fatal to due process. Sec. 939.10, Stats., provides that only those acts which are made crimes by statutes constitute crimes. Appellant contends that even correction of a clerical error, by changing a word or, as here, replacing a wrong number with a right one, means that he must not only read the statute as printed, but determine the legislative intent, in determining what conduct has been made unlawful. However, while penal statutes are to be strictly construed, [13] they are not to be so strictly construed as to defeat legislative intent. [14] The requirement of due process is the requirement of fundamental fairness in procedures followed. Such requirement of fairness does not convert every imperfection into a fatal flaw. Due process does not make a chest cold the equivalent of lung cancer. In the drafting and enacting of criminal statutes that proscribe certain conduct and provide penalties, lawmakers have an obvious responsibility to seek to avoid errors of omission and commission that create obscurity or raise doubt as to what is being done or intended to be done. The due process test is not, however, whether there was an error made or area of doubt created. The fairness test is whether a person of reasonable intelligence would be misled by such error or obscurity into believing that his conduct in a given situation was permitted conduct rather than proscribed or prohibited conduct. If a person of ordinary intelligence may reasonably be said to have notice that the conduct he contemplates is illegal, denial of due process of law is not involved in his being held criminally responsible for such conduct. [15] Where a person of ordinary intelligence could not reasonably be expected to understand that such conduct on his part was illegal, he is not to be prosecuted for doing what he could not know was proscribed. [16] Fairness requires fair warning of the existence of a crime and the fact of a penalty, but it does not require exact knowledge of all relevant criminal provisions governing the particular act he contemplates doing. [17] A molehill is not to be made into a mountain, and even a dozen molehills are not, by the process of addition, to be considered mountain-sized. The fairness test of due process requires only that the statute convey sufficiently definite warning as to the proscribed conduct when measured by common understanding and practices. [18] Nor is this, as appellant claims, the changing of a statute by a court to carry out an intent of the legislature. The statute is not changed so as to create a crime or add or subtract an essential element thereof. We do not enlarge the reach of enacted crime nor alter the incriminating components as prescribed and proscribed by the legislature. [19] The only change is as to a number incorrectly used. Substitution of a right number for an obviously and admittedly wrong one used is not creation of a crime by intendment. Applied to appellant, charged with illegal sale and illegal possession of cocaine with intent to sell, the claim of denial of due process fails. The unlawfulness of appellant's conduct, measured by common understanding and practices, was clear to him as to any person of ordinary intelligence. He does not claim that he was misled. He cannot be sustained in claiming he could have been. The possession and sale of cocaine have been illegal in Wisconsin since 1935. ( See ch. 306, Laws of 1935.) In fact, receiving and selling cocaine have been crimes against the United States since 1909. Undisputed and uncorrected portions of sec. 161.30, Stats., refer to cocaine no less than four times. The statute defines and lists cocaine as a dangerous substance. The statute prohibits and provides a penalty for Any person who is convicted of illegal possession with intent to sell, . . . The clear references to cocaine as a dangerous substance, the prohibition as to sale or illegal possession with intent to sell, and the penalty provisions gave fair warning to all, including the appellant, that sale and illegal possession were crimes in Wisconsin. An after-the-fact discovery by diligent counsel of a technical error or errors does not sustain the claim that appellant or anyone else could have been led to believe that sale or illegal possession of cocaine was no longer a crime in this state. We repeat that the court was entitled, in fact, obliged, to correct the error relating to renumbering in ch. 384that sec. 161.30, Stats., creates the crime and provides the penalty for sale and illegal possession of cocaine with intent to sellthat there is no insult to due process in such correction and construction. By the Court. Orders affirmed. BEILFUSS, J., took no part.