Opinion ID: 891686
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Defendant's Unaddressed Due Process Arguments

Text: {37} In his original briefing to the Court of Appeals, before that Court issued Myers I, Defendant made three arguments that the Act was unconstitutionally vague as applied: (1) a person of ordinary intelligence would not have had notice that his conductcharacterized as simply voyeurismwas prohibited, (2) the Act was arbitrarily enforced, and (3) district court unconstitutionally expanded the meaning of the narrow and precise statutory language when it applied the Act to Defendant. These are the arguments that we expected would be addressed in Myers III when we remanded this case to the Court of Appeals. We address them now and find none meritorious. {38} First, while Defendant argued he was not on notice that voyeurism, characterized by watching girls use the restroom and even surreptitiously videotaping them for his own use, would be criminal behavior under the Act, it was not Defendant's voyeurism that caused his criminal liability. Simply watching the girls without recording videos (and thus without manufacturing) would not have been criminal under the Act. Similarly, if Defendant had recorded non-lewd images of girls using the restroom, for his own or even others' sexual stimulation, he would not have incurred criminal liability under the Act. It was the combination of the specifically captured content of the imagestheir focus on the minors' genitals, the upward angle, the peephole-like framing, the grainy quality, and the objectively ascertainable purpose, making them lewd as discussed at length earlier in this Opinion and in Myers II and Defendant's subjective sexual purpose for the images that made their covert manufacture by Defendant into a criminal act. {39} Next, while it is true that the State arrested Defendant for his videotapes of minors, but not for those videos he took of adult women, that distinction cannot be described as arbitrary enforcement. Rather than `impermissibly delegating] basic policy matters to policemen, judges, and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application,' Old Abe Co. v. N.M. Mining Comm'n, 121 N.M. 83, 91-92, 908 P.2d 776, 784-85 (Ct.App.1995) (quoting Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-09, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972)), the Act specifically applies only to minors. Thus, Defendant's arrest and conviction for the images he manufactured of minors, but not those he manufactured of adults, was not arbitrary. {40} Finally, the district court did not unforeseeably expand the scope of the Act's narrow and precise statutory language. Because we ultimately upheld the district court's holding in Myers II, and because Myers II did not unforeseeably expand the scope of the Act, this argument is also without merit.