Court Opinion

ID: 9528531
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:41:50.016114+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:57.181055
License: Public Domain

Springer, J.,
dissenting:
The statute under which Childs stands convicted declares it to be unlawful to “manipulate, with the intent to cheat, any component of a gaming device in a manner contrary to the designed or normal operational purpose . . . .” There is ample evidence to convict Childs of a cheating manipulation of a slot machine.
Childs was observed, as put in the majority opinion, to “jerk the handle of the slot machine in such a way that one of the three reels would stop spinning prematurely.” This activity would, as I see it, be to “manipulate” a component (one of the three reels) in a manner contrary to the reel’s designed and normal purpose. If a “jerk” or other violent manipulation of a slot machine handle can cause one reel to stop “prematurely,” that is to say, “before the proper or usual time” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 928 (1985)), then I think the “jerker” is cheating. This kind of activity is not an exercise in “skill,” to borrow a word employed in Lyons but, rather, a conscious effort to disrupt the “proper or usual” operation of the machine. The design of a *589slot machine contemplates unobstructed, random, serial rotation of three reels. When a person interferes with the machine’s “operational purpose” by pushing, striking, jerking or other untoward physical insult to the machine which interferes with the machine’s normal operation, I consider this to be a “manipulation” which, when accompanied by a fraudulent intent, constitutes a crime under NRS Chapter 465. I do not like to declare statutes to be unconstitutional. I would uphold the conviction.