Court Opinion

ID: 9736586
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:00:30.563313+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:07.597673
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(dissenting). We all agree that what defendant did should be a felony. But I conclude that, unfortunately, the Legislature did not make it one until it amended the statute in 2007.1 therefore dissent.
The primary meaning of “depict,” in every dictionary I have consulted, is to represent by a picture (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 310 [10th ed 1993]; Random House-Webster’s College Dictionary 363 [1991]; 4 Oxford English Dictionary 477 [2d ed 1989]). As all these dictionaries say, “depict” can also be used as a synonym for “describe,” but if the Legislature intended to reach both pictures and words the obvious way to do so was to say “depicts or describes.” Elsewhere in article 235 of the Penal Law, the Legislature used “depicts” alone when it was referring only to visual representations (Penal Law § 235.21 [1] [a] [“picture, photograph ... or similar visual representation . . . which depicts”]); “descriptions” when it referred to purely verbal material (Penal Law § 235.21 [1] [b] [“verbal *562descriptions or narrative accounts”]); and “depicts or describes” and “depiction or description” when it referred to both (Penal Law § 235.00 [1] [“depicts or describes in a patently offensive manner”; § 235.00 [6] [“explicit depiction or description” of certain conduct]).
From a reading of article 235 as a whole, it seems fairly clear that the Legislature was using “depicts” in its primary, narrow sense. In construing a criminal statute, we should not give it a broader interpretation than the one a reasonable reader would draw from its text (see People v Case, 42 NY2d 98, 101 [1977]; People v Gottlieb, 36 NY2d 629, 632 [1975]). It is true, as the majority points out (majority op at 558-559), that comments in the legislative history — not specifically focused on the meaning of “depicts” — show that some of the legislation’s supporters thought it would reach nonpictorial material, but this does not seem to me enough reason to reject the apparent meaning of the statute itself.
If anything, I would give more weight to the expressed views of lawyers for the State who argued, in litigation that followed the statute’s enactment, that “depicts” referred only to images, not to words. The State took this position in two cases, in which it defended the constitutionality of two sections of the 1996 legislation directed at the use of the Internet by sexual predators. The State plainly thought then that the more narrowly the statutes were read, the likelier they were to be upheld. Thus the Attorney General in American Libs. Assn. v Pataki (969 F Supp 160 [SD NY 1997]), and both the Attorney General and the District Attorney in People v Foley (94 NY2d 668 [2000]), argued that the legislation covered only images.
The State’s arguments had mixed success. Penal Law § 235.21, which prohibits disseminating certain material to a minor even where there is no attempt to engage the minor in sexual activity, was invalidated by the Federal District Court in the American Libraries case, and is no longer enforced. In the course of its ruling, the District Court concluded — mistakenly, I believe— that the meaning of “depicts” was not as narrow as the Attorney General said (969 F Supp at 178 n 9). On the other hand, in Foley, we held that the statute involved here, Penal Law § 235.22, was constitutional, and in doing so we seemed to adopt the State’s narrow reading of “depicts.” Four times in the Foley opinion, we described the statute as prohibiting the dissemination of “images” (94 NY2d at 676 [“prohibiting the dissemination of graphic images”], 681 [“dissemination of harmful, sexual *563images”], 682 [“dissemination of a certain category of images”], 684 [“transmission of sexually graphic images”]). I acknowledge that our decision in Foley did not turn on the distinction between images and words, and I do not question the State’s right to change its mind. But its switch does not inspire confidence in the interpretation it now adopts.
The majority argues that the Legislature could not have intended a narrow meaning of “depicts,” because that meaning would interfere with the legislative purpose. But the Legislature had more than one purpose in 1996; and its purposes may have contradicted each other, because the Legislature chose to use identical words in describing two significantly different crimes.
The 1996 legislation added computer transmissions to the definition of the existing offense of disseminating indecent material to minors, and added “in the second degree” to that offense’s title. The second degree offense may be committed just by knowing dissemination, without any attempt to induce conduct by the minor (Penal Law § 235.21). The same legislation also created the new offense of disseminating indecent material to minors in the first degree (Penal Law § 235.22), the crime at issue here, which can be committed only by one who “importunes, invites or induces a minor to engage in” certain sexual conduct. Sending a communication that “depicts” particular material is an element of both offenses (Penal Law § 235.21 [3]; § 235.22 [1]).
The statute creating the new form of the second degree offense stood, as the American Libraries case was to show, on shaky constitutional ground, and the Legislature had every reason to write it as narrowly as possible in the hope of withstanding a challenge. There was no reason to be equally cautious in defining the first degree crime; indeed, I cannot see why it should not be a felony to invite a minor to have sex by means of any electronic communication (though even the newly-amended 2007 version of the statute does not go that far). I do not know why the 1996 Legislature chose to use the same narrow language in defining the first-degree crime that it did in defining the lesser one. But I do not believe that language reaches the admittedly heinous behavior of defendant in this case, and I think the Appellate Division was right to reverse his conviction.
*564Chief Judge Kaye and Judges Ciparick, Graffeo and Read concur with Judge Pigott; Judge Smith dissents and votes to affirm in a separate opinion in which Judge Jones concurs.
Order reversed and case remitted to the Appellate Division, Second Department, for consideration of the facts (CPL 470.25 [2] [d]; 470.40 [2] [b]) and issues raised but not determined on the appeal to that Court.