Opinion ID: 738502
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Einaugler's Other Claims

Text: 19 Einaugler's arguments regarding the admission of evidence of the patient's death and the constitutional invalidity of the statutes, as they were applied to him, can be dismissed summarily. 20 Einaugler argues that his conviction is unconstitutional as applied because the statutes under which he was convicted provided inadequate notice to him that his conduct might be criminal and because they punished him for exercising his medical judgment. A penal statute is void for vagueness unless it gives the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited and ... provides explicit standards for those who apply it. United States v. Nadi, 996 F.2d 548, 550 (2d Cir.1993) (internal quotation marks, brackets, and citations omitted). Einaugler was convicted pursuant N.Y. Public Health Law § 12-b and N.Y. Penal Law § 120.20. The language of these statutes and the definitions to which they refer are not vague in that they are clearly meant to apply to situations such as this one. Moreover, the laws include a scienter requirement--that the endangerment be reckless and that the neglect be knowing--and the Supreme Court has stated a scienter requirement may mitigate a law's vagueness especially with respect to the adequacy of notice to the complainant that his conduct is proscribed. Village of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 499, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 1193, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982) (footnote omitted). Nor was Einaugler punished under the statute simply for exercising reasonable medical judgment erroneously. See Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379, 395-97, 99 S.Ct. 675, 685-87, 58 L.Ed.2d 596 (1979). To convict Einaugler, the jury was required to find, and did find, that he was aware that the patient required a course of treatment that he did not provide. Accordingly, Einaugler's claims based on vagueness and arbitrariness of application are without merit. 21 Einaugler also contends that the district court erred in rejecting his argument that prosecution testimony mentioning Lamour's death and discussing its cause denied Einaugler a fair trial because such testimony was irrelevant to the crimes charged and was highly prejudicial. Even if we assumed that the testimony was erroneously admitted, and that this was an error of constitutional magnitude, we do not believe, considering the case as a whole, that the evidence of Lamour's death was so prejudicial as to create a reasonable probability that the jury would have given a different verdict had that evidence not been introduced. We thus have no basis to reverse on this ground.