Opinion ID: 1222969
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: lewdness

Text: According to that standard, one of the three types of acts defined as lewdness, a class B misdemeanor, is a lesser included offense of forcible sexual abuse. U.C.A., 1953, § 76-9-702 provides as follows: A person is guilty of lewdness if he [1] fornicates, [2] exposes his genitals or private parts, or [3] performs any other act of gross lewdness under circumstances which he should know will likely cause affront or alarm or does any such act in a public place. [Emphasis added.] At common law, the crime of lewdness consisted of the irregular indulgence of lust or other sexually oriented behavior that is indecent or offensive in a public place. 50 Am.Jur.2d Lewdness, Indecency and Obscenity § 1 (1970); 53 C.J.S. Lewdness § 1 (1948). As codified in modern statutes, the requirement that the proscribed conduct be observed in a public place has sometimes been omitted or supplemented by some alternative. [3] Thus, § 76-9-702 proscribes three types of acts, followed by two alternative requirements, one of which must be met with respect to each type of act. To constitute lewdness under this section, the defendant must have performed one of the three types of acts either (1) in a public place, or (2) under circumstances which he should know will likely cause affront or alarm... . Uncertainties about the perimeters of the common-law definition of lewdness have also resulted in some lewdness statutes being held void for vagueness. [4] That objection could be leveled against the third type of act proscribed in this statute (any other act of gross lewdness), unless we construe that language to put limits to its otherwise vague connotations. Pursuant to our obligation to construe a statute, wherever possible, to avoid constitutional infirmities such as vagueness and overbreadth, In re Nelda Boyer, Utah, 636 P.2d 1085 (1981), we are obliged to seek to construe a criminal statute to give specific content to terms that might otherwise be unconstitutionally vague. Braxton v. Municipal Court, 10 Cal.3d 138, 514 P.2d 697, 109 Cal. Rptr. 897 (1973). Faced with this problem as to the meaning of a California criminal statute, the Supreme Court of that state recently defined lewd conduct in terms that limited it to conduct which involves the touching of the genitals, buttocks or female breast... . Pryor v. Municipal Court for Los Angeles, 25 Cal.3d 238, 256, 599 P.2d 636, 647, 158 Cal. Rptr. 330, 341 (1979). We think the court should also have specified a touching of the anus, but with that addition we follow Pryor v. Municipal Court, supra, and adopt its quoted description as a definition of the term gross lewdness in § 76-9-702. [5] The type of touching with the intent of causing substantial emotional or bodily pain penalized in the felony of forcible sexual abuse, U.C.A., 1953, § 76-5-404, quoted earlier, will necessarily and always include the misdemeanor of performing an act of gross lewdness [as defined above] under circumstances which he should know will likely cause affront or alarm. Consequently, this type of lewdness is a lesser included offense of the felony of forcible sexual abuse. State v. Williams, supra . The record in this case leaves no reasonable doubt that the juvenile performed an act of gross lewdness as defined above, in violation of § 76-9-702. After inviting the complainant to commit an act of oral sex upon him, he forcibly rubbed his hand along her buttocks. The evidence is ample to persuade that he did so under circumstances which he should [have known would] likely cause affront or alarm. We therefore find on the basis of the record in this case that the juvenile committed the offense of lewdness, U.C.A., 1953, § 76-9-702, and is therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court. As modified by this finding, the juvenile court's order is affirmed, and this case is remanded to the juvenile court for the exercise of its jurisdiction consistent with this opinion. DON V. TIBBS, District Judge, concurs.