Opinion ID: 849107
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the solicitation statute

Text: I further disagree with the majority's conclusion that legal impossibility is not a recognized defense to a solicitation charge. As discussed above, the defense has been implicitly acknowledged in Michigan's case law. The majority states that no authority supports the proposition that legal impossibility is a defense to solicitation in other jurisdictions. However, this fact is unremarkable in light of the rarity with which the defense is invoked. Moreover, the impossibility issue can arise in all inchoate offenses, including solicitation. Robinson, § 85(f)(2), p. 436. The language of our solicitation statute demonstrates that an illegal solicitation must concern an act that would constitute a felony if completed. The statute states, a person who solicits another person to commit a felony, or who solicits another person to do or omit to do an act which if completed would constitute a felony, is punishable as follows.... M.C.L. § 750.157b(3). Legal impossibility would be a defense if the defendant's goal were illegal but the offense incomplete due to the defendant's factual mistake concerning the legal status of a relevant circumstance. See Dressler, § 27.07 [D][3][a], p. 373 (discussing hybrid legal impossibility). In this case, defendant was mistaken regarding the legal status of Bekka, whom he believed to be a female minor but who was actually a male adult. However, defendant's factual mistake is irrelevant in analyzing the charge of solicitation to commit third-degree criminal sexual conduct. Even if he had made his request to engage in sexual intercourse to a fourteen-year-old girl, defendant, not the girl, would have violated the CSC-3 statute. Therefore, I agree with the majority that defendant did not solicit Bekka to commit an act that constituted a felony within the meaning of the solicitation statute. I note that this is the same conclusion reached by the Court of Appeals. See People v. Thousand, 241 Mich.App. 102, 111, 614 N.W.2d 674 (2000). That Court erred, however, in applying a legal impossibility analysis. It was not defendant's mistake regarding the minority status of Bekka that is significant. Rather, an element of the solicitation charge is missing. Legal impossibility is, therefore, irrelevant under the facts of this case. The solicitation charge was properly dismissed because the prosecution could not prove all elements of the crime.