Opinion ID: 1774411
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Defendant's Constitutional Claims

Text: Ross challenges the ordinance as unconstitutionally vague. Vagueness is a doctrine rooted in the due process guarantees of Article I, § 2 of the Louisiana Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. There are two prongs of a vagueness analysis: first, a challenged provision must give actual notice of what activities are criminalized sufficient to allow a reasonable person to distinguish legitimate from criminal activity; and second, that same provision should establish minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement. Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 358, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 1859, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983), quoting Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566, 94 S.Ct. 1242, 39 L.Ed.2d 605 (1974). See also State v. Barthelemy, 545 So.2d 531, 532-533 (La.1989); State v. David, 468 So.2d 1126, 1128-1129 (La.1984), cert denied, 476 U.S. 1130, 106 S.Ct. 1998, 90 L.Ed.2d 678 (1985). Because of the nature of the void-for-vagueness doctrine, it is a specie of facial challenge; if a statute or ordinance is unconstitutionally vague, it is universally unenforceable, and therefore subject to complete invalidation. See Coates v. Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, 614, 91 S.Ct. 1686, 1688, 29 L.Ed.2d 214 (1971); State v. Azar, 539 So.2d 1222 (La.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 823, 110 S.Ct. 82, 107 L.Ed.2d 48 (1989). Regarding the core penal provision of the ordinance, the prohibition against intentional solicitation of another for illegal drug activity, I find that the construction of the ordinance imposing an element of specific criminal intent obviates any vagueness concerns raised by Ross. Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 101, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 1035, 89 L.Ed. 1495 (1945) ( plurality opinion ) (The Court, indeed, has recognized that the requirement of a specific intent to do a prohibited act may avoid those consequences to the accused which may otherwise render a vague or indefinite statute invalid). Subsection (b) of the ordinance lucidly sets forth the extent of the proscribed activities; furthermore, Subsection (d) of the ordinances makes it clear that merely remain[ing] in a public place without also intentionally soliciting ... or procuring another to engage in illegal drug activities does not violate the ordinance. [W]here the punishment imposed is only for an act knowingly done with the purpose of doing that which the [ordinance] prohibits, the accused cannot be said to suffer from lack of warning or knowledge that the act which he does is a violation of law. Screws, supra, at 102, 65 S.Ct. at 1036. Counsel for Ross raised in oral argument the fact that the term loitering has been found by a number of courts to be inherently vague. While I do not concede counsel's proposition, even if I assume that the term loiter is inherently vague it does not affect my opinion on this issue. The term loitering as used in the ordinance is merely classificatory, providing a nomenclature by which the ordinance may be referred to and discussed in an abbreviated manner. The ordinance could have been called Ordinance X, which is surely inherently vague; this would not mean that the body of the ordinance fails to give sufficient notice of what activity is criminal or fails to establish minimum guidelines for law enforcement officers. The trial court expressly found the phrase remains in a public place, in subsection (b), the penal provision of the ordinance, to be unconstitutionally vague. Public place is generally defined in subsection (a)(5) of the ordinance as an area generally visible to public view. This Court has previously been called upon to interpret statutes that proscribe conduct which occurs in a public place, and on those occasions this Court has not found the phrase's supposed vagueness to be an obstacle to its application. See State v. Muller, 365 So.2d 464, 466-467 (La.1978) ( on rehearing ); State v. Christine, 239 La. 259, 118 So.2d 403, 405-406 (1960), citing Nelson v. Natchez, 197 Miss. 26, 19 So.2d 747 (1944). I note that police officers in particular have an understanding of the distinction between public and private places, since the constitutional propriety of much of their conduct depends upon this distinction. See, e.g., California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988); United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598 (1976). See also Note 18, infra. For these reasons, I find that the term public place as defined in the ordinance is not unconstitutionally vague. The trial court appeared to focus upon the ambiguous temporal aspect of the verb remains in reaching its conclusion that the ordinance was unconstitutionally vague. I disagree with the trial court's emphasis upon the amount of time one must be in a public place to remain there, and the resulting conclusion, for three reasons. First, the court notes that whether the statutory language of [an] ... ordinance prohibits `remaining' or `being' on the streets is insignificant because `remain' and `to be' are generally given synonymous interpretations at the enforcement level for the obvious reason they have as a practical matter ... no intelligible difference in meaning, and a judicial determination on this ground as to the validity of an ordinance is mere semantics and untenable. Bykofsky v. Borough of Middletown, 401 F.Supp. 1242, 1252 (M.D.Pa.1975), aff'd, 535 F.2d 1245 (3d Cir.1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 964, 97 S.Ct. 394, 50 L.Ed.2d 333 (1976). Second, Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged Ed.1961) reveals that the root meaning of `remain' is `to stay,' and makes no reference to a time requirement. Hernandez v. State, 783 S.W.2d 764, 765 (Tx.App.1990). Third, no other court which has examined the question has found the term remains or any of its derivatives to be unconstitutionally vague. See State in the Interest of J.A.V., 558 So.2d 214, 216 (La.1990); Williams v. Osmundson, supra, at 627; Hernandez, supra, 783 S.W.2d at 765; State v. Belcher, 161 Ariz. 133, 776 P.2d 811, 812 (1989), denial of habeas corpus aff 'd, Belcher v. Crist, 953 F.2d 1386 (9th Cir.1992); Bykofsky, supra, 401 F.Supp. at 1252; Hurley v. Hinckley, 304 F.Supp. 704, 711 (D.Mass.1969), aff'd, 396 U.S. 277, 90 S.Ct. 603, 24 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970). In sum, I find that the term remains is a concept so ingrained in the vernacular that men of common intelligence [need not] guess at its meaning and differ as to its application. Connally v. General Constr. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391, 46 S.Ct. 126, 127, 70 L.Ed. 322 (1926). Thus, regarding the first prong of the void-for-vagueness test, while there are limitations in the English language with respect to being both specific and manageably brief, and it seems to us that although the prohibitions may not satisfy those intent on finding fault at any cost, [this ordinance is] set out in terms that the ordinary person exercising ordinary common sense can sufficiently understand and comply with. United States Civil Service Comm'n v. Nat'l Ass'n of Letter Carriers, 413 U.S. 548, 578-579, 93 S.Ct. 2880, 2897, 37 L.Ed.2d 796 (1973). As far as the second prong, i.e. that the ordinance establish sufficient guidelines to limit the discretion of law enforcement personnel, I find that [a]ny discretion possessed by police to determine whether a crime has occurred is merely a question of probable cause to arrest and not a flaw in the definition of the crime itself. Superior Court, supra, 758 P.2d at 1057. For these reasons I think that the trial court erred in finding the ordinance unconstitutionally vague.
In this case the City of Baton Rouge has charged Ross with remaining in a public place and intentionally soliciting another to engage in illegal drug activities. In the course of his overbreadth challenge Ross argues that the ordinance is unconstitutional insofar as it penalizes a number of constitutionally protected activities. As a general rule, the First Amendment [of the federal Constitution and Article I, §§ 7 and 9 of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974] provide that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content. DeSalvo v. State, 624 So.2d 897, 899 (La. 1993), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 114 S.Ct. 1067, 127 L.Ed.2d 386 (1994), citing Police Dep't of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 92 S.Ct. 2286, 33 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972). However, there are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. Cinel, supra, at 312, quoting Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571-572, 62 S.Ct. 766, 769, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942). Overbreadth analysis exists because, in cases where the point of demarcation between regulation of protected and unprotected speech is hazy, the risk that arbitrary, vindictive, or selective enforcement of the provision may have a chilling effect upon rights of speech and assembly warrants an exception to the general rule that courts review legislative acts only as applied to the parties before them. [17] Lawrence Tribe, American Constitutional Law, Pp. 1022-1023 (2d ed. 1988). See also Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., Inc., 467 U.S. 947, 965, 104 S.Ct. 2839, 2851-2852, 81 L.Ed.2d 786 (1984) (overbreadth appropriate where there is no core of easily identifiable and constitutionally proscribable conduct that the statute prohibits). There are two salient aspects to an overbreadth challenge. The first is that it is a facial challenge; a reviewing court does not examine the challenged statute or ordinance as applied to the parties before it, but rather tests the constitutionality of the legislation in terms of its potential applications. Geoffrey R. Stone et alia, Constitutional Law, P. 1039-1040 (1986). Thus, overbreadth allows attacks on overly broad statutes with no requirement that the person making the attack demonstrate that his own conduct could not be regulated by a statute drawn with the requisite specificity. Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 486, 85 S.Ct. 1116, 1121, 14 L.Ed.2d 22 (1965). See also NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 432, 83 S.Ct. 328, 338-339, 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1963); Note, The First Amendment Overbreadth Doctrine, 83 Har.L.Rev. 844 (1970). The second, and far more significant, aspect of the overbreadth doctrine is that, if applicable, the offensive legislation is voided on its face, i.e. in its entirety, regardless of whether constitutional applications of the legislation exist. See Board of Airport Comm'ners v. Jews for Jesus, 482 U.S. 569, 107 S.Ct. 2568, 96 L.Ed.2d 500 (1987); City of Houston, Texas, supra . As has already been noted, the jurisprudence reveals a bifurcation between speech which is protected from governmental regulation and speech which may legitimately be limited or even prohibited, i.e. unprotected speech. Ross argues that the ordinance is unconstitutional because criminal liability for drug loitering is indistinguishable from and in fact defined in terms of constitutionally protected conduct. City of Tacoma, supra, 827 P.2d at 1381. The defendant's argument dissipates in the light of a proper construction of the ordinance. [T]he mere fact that one can conceive of some impermissible applications of a statute is not sufficient to render it susceptible to an overbreadth challenge; rather, the potentially impermissible applications of a challenged statute or ordinance must be substantial when compared to the activities which it may properly proscribe. Los Angeles City Council v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 800, 104 S.Ct. 2118, 2126, 80 L.Ed.2d 772 (1984). See also Broadrick, supra, at 615-616, 93 S.Ct. at 2917. When the ordinance is viewed in light of the construction placed upon it, I find that any overbreadth is insubstantial. By requiring specific intent and overt acts, the ordinance does not then reach into the arena of constitutionally protected First Amendment conduct. City of Tacoma, supra, 827 P.2d at 1384. The ordinance as construed simply does not reach constitutionally protected activity. Id, at 1380. The ordinance prohibits any speech or conduct which the speaker engages in with the specific intent to induce others to engage in illegal drug activities. This category of speech is clearly unprotected. See Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., 336 U.S. 490, 502, 69 S.Ct. 684, 691, 93 L.Ed. 834 (1950) ([i]t has never been deemed an abridgement of freedom of speech ... to make a course of conduct illegal merely because it was conduct in part initiated, evidenced, or carried out by means of language, either spoken, written, or printed). Criminal speech and conduct such as this may be prohibited even though intertwined with expression and association. Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 563, 85 S.Ct. 476, 480, 13 L.Ed.2d 487 (1965). While I clearly endorse the propriety of the ordinance's purpose, I nonetheless recognize that since the ordinance addresses itself to the communicative impact of public speech and assembly there is bound to be some incidental impact upon protected speech and assembly. The test for determining the constitutionality of such a regulation is that set out in United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 376, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 1679, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968), reh'g denied, 393 U.S. 900, 89 S.Ct. 63, 21 L.Ed.2d 188 (1969): [18] we think it clear that a government regulation is sufficiently justified if it is within the constitutional power of the Government; if it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; if the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and if the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest.... In this case, the ordinance's goal is the eradication of drug trafficking from the public places of Baton Rouge, and I find that interdicting drug distribution networks through the criminalization of public solicitation of illegal drug activities is a historically accepted and reasonable exercise of the City-Parish's delegated police power. In particular, I find the words of the New York Supreme Court of Appeals, written in 1969, persuasive on this point: It appears that the Legislature in enacting the statute before us sought to prevent generally idle and dissolute persons engaged in the unlawful traffic of narcotics, from drawing together for that purpose in places frequented by other citizens, thereby endangering public health, morals, and tranquility. This protection of innocent citizens from drug users is a very crucial problem. As has recently been pointed out by several newspaper articles, in some of our poorer urban areas where drug use is high, innocent citizens are often beaten, robbed, and even murdered by drug addicts. It is completely reasonable and proper for the Legislature to protect these citizens from accidentally stumbling into the midst of such miscreants in the common areas.... People v. Pagnotta, 25 N.Y.2d 333, 305 N.Y.S.2d 484, 489, 253 N.E.2d 202, 206 (1969) ( citations omitted ). See also Bykofsky, supra, 401 F.Supp. at 1258 ([t]he Borough has a legitimate interest in the reasonable control of its streets). These sentiments are at least as valid now as they were in 1969. Based upon the foregoing, I conclude that the City of Baton Rouge has a substantial, if not compelling, interest in combatting drug trafficking, and that the ordinance is a constitutionally proper way for it to attack this problem. With the underlying purpose of the ordinance in mind, I find that the City's design does not include the deliberate suppression of any protected expression. Finally, I find that the ordinance, which penalizes only those who engage in speech or conduct specifically designed to procure others for illegal drug activity, is narrowly tailored to prohibit only the targeted unlawful conduct, and that therefore any collateral and/or marginal impact upon legitimate expression is no greater than required to achieve the ordinance's intended goal. City of Houston, supra, at 465, 107 S.Ct. at 2511. For these reasons, I adjudge that the ordinance as applied to Shelton Ross is not in violation of Article I, §§ 7 and 9 of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974, or the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It must be noted that when an ordinance such as this is challenged on overbreadth grounds, the proper procedure is to evaluate the constitutionality of the legislation based upon its effective reach as construed, i.e. to look at the speech or conduct actually penalized. The police may arrest a murderer while he is standing on a soap box in a public forum making a political speech to a peacefully assembled political organization; however, it simply does not follow from this that the statute forbidding murder in any way infringes upon freedoms of speech and assembly. The gist of the defendant's arguments in this case are directed not at the scope of the ordinance and its impact upon free expression, the proper subject of overbreadth analysis, but rather to questions of probable cause and evidentiary sufficiency which implicate constitutional provisions unrelated to Article I, §§ 7 and 9 of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974 and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. I recognize that the nature of criminal solicitation in particular and inchoate offenses in general is such that there may be more opportunity for abuse in the enforcement of such an ordinance. [19] However, the fact that a law may be improperly applied or even abused does not render it constitutionally invalid. City of Milwaukee, supra, 291 N.W.2d at 458. Rather, any contention that constitutional privacy or due process guarantees have been violated can be adequately dealt with in the course of prosecution of individual cases on their individual facts; these concerns are not an adequate predicate for finding that the [ordinance] is invalid on its face. [20] Superior Court, supra, 758 P.2d at 1054. Ross also alleged that subsection (c) [21] of the ordinance impermissibly criminalizes a number of innocent activities. However, the express language of that subsection reveals that the enumerated activities are not in themselves proscribed, but are merely [a]mong the circumstances which may be considered in determining whether [a] person intends to solicit others for illegal drug activities. This subsection is not a penal provision; instead, by its own language it merely creates guidelines to assist municipal law enforcement personnel in their inquiries. [22] The focus of overbreadth is the extent to which the challenged statute or ordinance proscribes constitutionally protected expression; since subsection (c) merely clarifies the penal provision of subsection (b) but does not itself forbid protected speech or conduct, I find subsection (c) irrelevant to the defendant's overbreadth challenge. I conclude that the ordinance is not unconstitutionally overbroad since it does not impermissibly impinge upon rights of free expression guaranteed by the Louisiana and federal constitutions. In my opinion, the trial court erred when it determined otherwise.