Court Opinion

ID: 9736288
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:49:54.833344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:05.528793
License: Public Domain

Krivosha, C.J.,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the majority in this case in that I agree that Neb. Rev. Stat. § 39-669 (Reissue 1984) is not unconstitutionally vague. I reach that conclusion because the statute provides that one is guilty of careless driving only if he or she drives carelessly or without due caution so as to endanger a *534person or property. I believe that the requirement that the driving be so careless as to endanger a person or property makes the elements of the crime sufficiently clear so as to overcome the attack for vagueness.
I cannot, however, agree with all of the language of the majority, and for that reason I must concur in the result. This particular case is the completion of a trilogy which began with State v. Frey, 218 Neb. 558, 357 N.W.2d 216 (1984), and State v. Groves, 219 Neb. 382, 363 N.W.2d 507 (1985). I suggest that if one attempts to lay those three decisions side by side and arrive at any clear understanding of how and under what conditions a statute may be constitutionally attacked, one will find such task impossible.
Frey was a case in which the information was dismissed before any evidence was adduced. In Frey, supra at 561-62, 357 N.W.2d at 219, we said:
In order to have standing to challenge a vague statute, one must not have engaged in conduct which is clearly proscribed by the statute, and cannot complain of the vagueness of the law as applied to the conduct of others. We should therefore examine Frey’s conduct before analyzing other hypothetical applications of the law... .
The difficulty with completing the second step in the constitutional analysis, determining whether § 28-708 is impermissibly vague, is that the record is devoid of any facts which would tell us whether Frey’s conduct was clearly proscribed by the statute. Consequently, we are unable to determine whether Frey has standing to attack the constitutionality of § 28-708.
We, therefore, remanded the cause for further proceedings on the merits.
In Groves, supra, we were presented with a situation in which the defendant was tried and convicted of violating a city ordinance and, as part of his appeal, argued that the ordinance was unconstitutional. In rejecting Groves’ right to raise that issue, we held that because Groves’ conduct clearly came within the conduct prohibited by the ordinance, he lacked standing to test the constitutionality of the ordinance for vagueness.
*535Finally, in Merithew, in which there are no facts, we proceed to determine whether the statute is vague in general, although we make note in passing that we cannot decide whether it is vague as applied to Merithew. Why Merithew is treated differently than Frey is difficult to discern from a mere reading of the opinions.
What I believe all of this points up is that what we created in Frey was wrong, and we should quickly overrule Frey and Groves and once again return to what I perceive was the rule in this jurisdiction — that anyone may challenge the constitutionality of a statute which he or she maintains is unconstitutional because it is vague.