Opinion ID: 2063953
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutionality of the right or wrong provision in subsection 709.4(2).

Text: Trial court's supplemental ruling makes clear it found only the following portion of subsection 709.4(2) unconstitutionally vague: lacks the mental capacity to know the right and wrong of conduct in sexual matters. The State contends this clause simply restates, in a different way, the essential meaning of consent, the operative word in the first part of the challenged subsection. The State asserts the total subsection, interpreted in light of our prior decisions, merely requires one who would engage in a sex act with another to ascertain that the other participant is not suffering from a mental defect or incapacity that would prevent him or her from knowing and understanding the nature and consequences of the contemplated act. Defendant argues it is not possible for a reasonable person to read the last part of the subsection and understand what specific conduct is prohibited; that the right and wrong of conduct in sexual matters invokes different standards in different people and is too indefinite to serve as a basis for a criminal charge. The principles we apply in this type of case are well established. We briefly refer to only a few. The person mounting the constitutional challenge on a legislative enactment carries the heavy burden to rebut a strong presumption of constitutionality. See Miller v. Iowa Real Estate Commission, 274 N.W.2d 288, 291 (Iowa 1979); State v. Kueny, 215 N.W.2d 215, 216 (Iowa 1974). If a statute can be made constitutionally definite by a reasonable construction, this court is under a duty to give the statute that construction. State v. Williams, 238 N.W.2d 302, 306 (Iowa 1976) (quoting United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 618, 74 S.Ct. 808, 812, 98 L.Ed. 989, 996-97 (1954)). The specificity due process requires of a penal statute, Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-09, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 2298-99, 33 L.Ed.2d 222, 227-28 (1972), need not be apparent from the face of the statute but may be ascertained by reference to prior judicial decisions, similar statutes, the dictionary, or common generally accepted usage. See Williams v. Osmundson, 281 N.W.2d 622, 625 (Iowa 1979); State v. Williams, 238 N.W.2d at 307; State v. Aldrich, 231 N.W.2d 890, 894 (Iowa 1975); State v. Willis, 218 N.W.2d 921, 923 (Iowa 1974) (quoting Kueny, 215 N.W.2d at 217). Judicial decisions from other jurisdictions may be helpful. Kueny, 215 N.W.2d at 218. In ascribing meaning to a criminal statute, courts may properly consider the evil sought to be remedied and the objects or purposes the legislative enactment seeks to obtain. State ex rel. Fulton v. Scheetz, 166 N.W.2d 874, 877-78 (Iowa 1969); see § 4.6, The Code. Subsection 709.4(2) was enacted in 1977, as a part of the Iowa Criminal Code revision ( see 1976 Session, 66th G.A., ch. 1245, § 904). One commentator believes new subsection 709.4(2) corresponds to the prerevised statute 698.3 [§ 698.3, The Code 1975] and existing case law, but the language is modernized. J. Roehrick, The New Iowa Criminal Code: A Comparison 77 (1977). See also J. Yeager & R. Carlson, 4 Iowa Practice: Criminal Law and Procedure § 205, at 59 (1979), commenting that the language of new subsection 709.1(2), a definitional subsection corresponding to subsection 709.4(2), was distilled from State v. Haner, 186 Iowa 1259, 173 N.W. 225 (1919). The Haner court interpreted the former version of the statute and described the legislative intent behind its provisions: [T]he protection of the law ... includes... those who, while having some degree of intellectual power and some capacity for instruction and improvement, are still so far below the normal in mental strength that they can offer no effectual resistance to the approach of those who take advantage of their weakness to have or attempt sexual intercourse with them. This would . . . include those who by reason of mental inferiority are incapable of knowing or realizing the moral quality of their act and are therefore also incapable of giving rational consent. On the other hand, it manifestly does not include those who are endowed with mental capacity to know the right and wrong of their conduct in sexual matters, but yield to intercourse under the influence of temptation or passion or inclination to vice. 186 Iowa at 1262, 173 N.W. at 226 (emphasis supplied). An overview of section 709.4 in light of Haner discloses an intent to protect certain persons from nonconsensual sex acts. Generally, subsection one prohibits the use of force or the commission of a sex act against the will of the other participant. Subsection two protects persons who are so mentally deficient or incapacitated they cannot give a rational consent. Subsection three protects children, who of course are deemed to lack the mental maturity to give consent. The remaining subsections protect young persons in situations in which coercion or undue advantage might be applied. Narrowing the focus to the specific provision under attack, we conclude that while its language may have aided the Haner court in explaining the application of the ancestor statute in 1919, in today's society it cannot, consistent with constitutional due process, be elevated to a defensible statutory standard. It is not enough, of course, that it obscures and might well defeat the purpose of subsection 709.4(2). The problem is that no matter how carefully circumscribed in a jury instruction, the challenged provision inevitably will result in convictions based not on the jury's view of the facts, but on its view of the morality of certain sexual conduct. We grappled with a related problem in State v. Hamann, 285 N.W.2d 180, 182-85 (Iowa 1979), where the defendant, charged with murder, asked that we abandon the M'Naghten rule. Under scrutiny was the instruction on insanity: Insane or insanity, as used in this instruction, means such a diseased or deranged condition of mind as to render a person either incapable of knowing or understanding the nature and quality of the act committed by him, or incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong in relation to that act. 285 N.W.2d at 183 (emphasis supplied). We rejected defendant Hamann's argument for a subjective view of morality in the above right and wrong test: We believe the words right or wrong. . . should be understood in their legal and not in their moral sense. In this world of revolutionary and often violent change it is futile to pretend that our society maintains a consensus on moral questions beyond what it writes into its laws. Contemporary philosophers and theologians ponder mightily but without notable success to reach agreement on the general mores of our society. National debates rage over a myriad of moral issues. Few are resolved with anything approaching unanimity. Impossible uncertainty over the so-called general mores renders the appreciation of morality a tool unfit for the task of measuring sanity. 285 N.W.2d at 183. The moral right and wrong test is also an unfit tool in determining the mental competency of a person to consent to a sex act. Nor, in the sexual abuse situation, are we able to salvage the provision by ruling that the words should be applied in a legal, not a moral, sense. Subsection 709.4(2) addresses the mental capacity of the other sex act participant, not the defendant's mental capacity. A sex act, defined in section 702.17, is not illegal except in certain limited situations elsewhere identified. Sexual conduct, qua conduct, is not proscribed. Application of the right and wrong dichotomy in the legal context would require the victim to analyze his or her own mental capacity to assent to a sex act. We are not persuaded the legislature intended to impose such a test. We therefore strike from subsection 709.4(2) as unconstitutionally vague the provision or lacks the mental capacity to know the right and wrong of conduct in sexual matters. As a result, the question is whether there remains a viable statute expressive of legislative intent. Aldrich, 231 N.W.2d at 895; see State v. Monroe, 236 N.W.2d 24, 35 (Iowa 1975); § 4.12, The Code.