Opinion ID: 797712
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Standards for the Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine

Text: 12 It is well-established that the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1, ensures that the individual need not speculate as to the meaning of penal statutes and is entitled to be informed as to what the State commands or forbids, Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 453, 59 S.Ct. 618, 83 L.Ed. 888 (1939). As one of the most fundamental protections of the Due Process Clause, Farrell v. Burke, 449 F.3d 470, 484 (2d Cir.2006), the void-for-vagueness doctrine requires that laws be crafted with sufficient clarity to `give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited' and to `provide explicit standards for those who apply them,' Betancourt v. Bloomberg, 448 F.3d 547, 552 (2d Cir.2006) (quoting Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972)). 13 Supreme Court jurisprudence recognizes two independent grounds upon which a statute's language may be so vague as to deny due process of law. First, a law violates due process if it fails to provide people of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to understand what conduct it prohibits. Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 732, 120 S.Ct. 2480, 147 L.Ed.2d 597 (2000). Animating this first vagueness ground is the constitutional principle that individuals should receive fair notice or warning when the state has prohibited specific behavior or acts. See Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566, 572, 94 S.Ct. 1242, 39 L.Ed.2d 605 (1974) (The doctrine incorporates notions of fair notice or warning.). Second, a law is unconstitutionally vague if it authorizes or even encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. Hill, 530 U.S. at 732, 120 S.Ct. 2480. This second ground, which the Supreme Court recognizes as the more important aspect of the vagueness doctrine, mandates that laws contain minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement. Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 358, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983). Indeed, statutes must provide explicit standards for those who apply them to avoid resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application. Grayned, 408 U.S. at 108-09, 92 S.Ct. 2294. 14 The Supreme Court has cautioned that this doctrine does not require meticulous specificity from every statute, id. at 110, 92 S.Ct. 2294, as language is necessarily marked by a degree of imprecision, Farrell, 449 F.3d at 485. Instead, [t]he degree of vagueness that the Constitution tolerates—as well as the relative importance of fair notice and fair enforcement— depends in part on the nature of the enactment. Village of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 498, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982). While economic regulations are subject to a less strict vagueness test, we apply a more stringent analysis when examining laws that impose criminal penalties because the consequences of imprecision are qualitatively more severe. Id. at 498-99, 102 S.Ct. 1186. 15 This case does not present the typical vagueness challenge because the language Thibodeau alleges is unconstitutional concerns not the specific elements of the first-degree kidnapping statute but rather the evidentiary presumption of death that the statute permits in certain situations. 4 While Thibodeau has cited no cases where courts have applied the void-for-vagueness doctrine to an evidentiary presumption— and we are unaware of any—vagueness analysis is appropriate here because the presumption, as applied by the police and the jury, satisfied a required element of the first-degree kidnapping statute, leading to Thibodeau's arrest and conviction, a clear deprivation of his liberty. Thus, we must determine whether the State properly deprived Thibodeau of his liberty, particularly where it has accorded to the police and jury the discretion to determine whether the length of time a kidnapping victim has been missing is sufficient to presume his or her death in a criminal case.