Opinion ID: 6320116
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: conclusion

Text: For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court. Affirmed. Papik, J., concurring. The conviction Tanya L. Hofmann challenges in this appeal stems from an answer she provided to a question on a firearm permit application. Although I believe an argument can be made that the question on the application was ambiguous, under the circumstances, I agree that Hofmann’s conviction should be affirmed. The question at issue asked, “Are you under indictment or information in any court for a felony, or any other crime for which the judge could imprison you for more than one year? (An information is a formal accusation of a crime by a prosecutor. An indictment is from a grand jury).” - 624 - Nebraska Supreme Court Advance Sheets 310 Nebraska Reports STATE v. HOFMANN Cite as 310 Neb. 609 The majority finds the language in parentheses to include a definition of the term “information” for purposes of the application form. As the majority understands it, the first sentence in the parentheses defines “information” to include any formal accusation of a crime by a prosecutor and thus would encompass complaints filed in county court. I agree that is a possible understanding of the question, but I am not sure it is the only one. Some inferences must be made to understand the language in the parentheses to provide a definition of “information” for purposes of the application. The language does not say it is setting forth a definition. Further, the references to both “information” and “indictment” read more like explanatory statements than exhaustive definitions: The language does not state that any formal accusation of a crime by a prosecutor should be treated as an information, only that an information is a formal accusation of a crime by a prosecutor; the reference to “indictment” is even more cursory. And, most importantly, as the majority opinion acknowledges, in Nebraska the term “information” is generally used to refer to a particular type of formal accusation of a crime by a prosecutor—one that is filed in district court either after a county court holds a preliminary hearing and finds probable cause exists to charge the defendant with a crime in the case of an ordinary information or one that is filed initially in the district court in the case of a direct information. See, e.g., State v. Boslau, 258 Neb. 39, 601 N.W.2d 769 (1999). Based on all this, I believe it is possible that an applicant could understand the question to be asking whether he or she was under an information as that term is generally used under Nebraska law, i.e., under an information filed in district court. There are obvious concerns about holding a person criminally liable for his or her responses to questions that could be understood in different ways. Federal courts have developed two legal categories for dealing with claims that a perjury or false statement prosecution is based on responses - 625 - Nebraska Supreme Court Advance Sheets 310 Nebraska Reports STATE v. HOFMANN Cite as 310 Neb. 609 to ambiguous questions: fundamental ambiguity and arguable ambiguity. Federal courts will treat a question as fundamentally ambiguous in narrow circumstances, when the question lacks “‘a meaning about which men of ordinary intellect could agree, nor one which could be used with mutual understanding by a questioner and answerer unless it were defined at the time it were sought and offered as testimony.’” U.S. v. Strohm, 671 F.3d 1173, 1179 (10th Cir. 2011). If a question is fundamentally ambiguous, a response to it cannot be the basis for false statement liability. Id. Whether a question is fundamentally ambiguous is decided by the court as a matter of law. Id. See, also, United States v. Lighte, 782 F.2d 367 (2d Cir. 1986). A question is arguably ambiguous, on the other hand, where “more than one reasonable interpretation of a question exists.” Strohm, 671 F.3d at 1181. Even when a question is arguably ambiguous, a person can still intend to give and, in fact, give a false answer. Accordingly, the meaning of an arguably ambig­ uous question and what the defendant understood the question to mean are to be determined by the finder of fact and reviewed for sufficiency of the evidence. Id. In this case, Hofmann presented no argument that the question was so ambiguous that she could not attempt to give a false answer as a matter of law. And while perhaps Hofmann could have developed an argument in the district court that due to ambiguity, she misunderstood the question at issue and did not intend to give a false answer, I do not believe she can now show that there was insufficient evidence to support her conviction. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, I believe a rational trier of fact could have found that the language in parentheses defined “information” to encompass any formal accusation of a crime by a prosecutor and that Hofmann understood the question and intended to give a false response, especially in light of Hofmann’s stipulation to the necessary intent for the crime.