Court Opinion

ID: 9786843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:03:36.967337+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:49.207167
License: Public Domain

WECHSLER, Chief Judge (specially concurring). WECHSLER, Chief Judge (specially concurring). {16} I concur in the result. I write separately to stress an apparent gap in legislative intent. {17} I believe that the criminal damage to property statute, Section 30-15-1, is ambiguous with regard to community property. It can be read, as the majority does, from the perspective of ownership, such that “property of another” precludes any common ownership interest and “consent of the owner” requires the consent of common owners. It can also be read from the point of view of a victim, such that “property of another” refers to the property interest of the victim and “consent of the owner” refers to the consent of the victim as to the victim’s property interest. Our interpretation of the statutory language is a matter of legislative intent. State v. Ogden, 118 N.M. 234, 242, 880 P.2d 845, 853 (1994). {18} The legislative intent, however, is problematic. The criminal damage to property statute, as the opinion demonstrates, is founded in the common law, and at common law, the crime could not be committed if the perpetrator was one of the owners of the property. We presume the legislature adopted the common law meaning in enacting the statute. 4 Torcía, supra, § 475, at 66 (observing that even though the common law concept had been modified by statute, “the essence of the offense remains the same; an injury to or destruction of the property of another”). {19} When it included criminal damage to property as an act of domestic abuse in the Family Violence Protection Act, the legislature indicated a different intent. See §§ 40-13-2, 40-13-3. The Family Violence Protection Act is not a criminal statute. It is designed to protect spouses, among others, from acts of domestic abuse. See id. It allows a spouse who has been subjected to an incident of domestic abuse to obtain an order of protection against the spouse who caused the incident. See id. Although I agree with the majority opinion that the Family Violence Protection Act can be read to exclude the incident in this case from the definition of domestic abuse, I do not believe the legislature had such intent. We would not construe a statute to achieve an absurd or unreasonable result. See State v. Wyrostek, 108 N.M. 140, 142, 767 P.2d 379, 381 (Ct.App.1988). I believe that when the legislature incorporated criminal damage to property into the Family Violence Protection Act, it intended to include an incident such as occurred in this case as an act of domestic violence. {20} However, the legislature did not accomplish this intent. When it carried over the criminal damage to property statute into the Family Violence Protection Act, it also carried over the legislative intent for enacting the criminal damage to property statute. This original intent, based on the common law, does not include damage to community property within the scope of the crime. See State v. Cleve, 1999-NMSC-017, ¶ 15, 127 N.M. 240, 980 P.2d 23 (stating that a statute should be interpreted in accord with how the legislature “understood it at the time it was passed”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). {21} As a result, when I look to the legislative intent to construe the criminal damage to property statute, what appears to be the obvious intent of the Family Violence Protection Act does not assist in my inquiry. I therefore agree with the majority to affirm the dismissal of the indictment and suggest that if my reading of the legislative intent is correct, legislative action is necessary. See Ariz.Rev.Stat. § 13-1601(4) (1997) (defining property of another as “property in which any person other than the defendant has an interest, including community property and other property in which the defendant also has an interest”); Model Penal Code and Commentaries § 220.3 cmt. 3 (1980) (stating that property of another should be defined “to include property ‘in which any person other than the actor has an interest which the actor is not privileged to infringe, regardless of the fact that the actor also has an interest in the property [.]’ ”) (quoting Model Penal Code § 223.0(7)).