Court Opinion

ID: 9605095
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:30:01.32878+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:44.428931
License: Public Domain

ERICKSON, Justice,
dissenting:
I disagree with a statutory construction which excludes the placement of false license plates on a stolen vehicle from the statutory proscription of section 18-4-409(2)(b), C.R.S.1973 (1978 Repl.Vol. 8), and I therefore would affirm the defendant’s conviction for aggravated motor vehicle theft.
On March 12, 1979, the date of the offense charged in court, section 18-4-409(2)(b) provided in pertinent part:
“(2) A person commits aggravated motor vehicle theft if he knowingly obtains or exercises control over the motor vehicle of another without authorization . . . and:
(b) Attempts to alter or disguise or alters or disguises the appearance of the motor vehicle.”
Admittedly, an ambiguous criminal statute or one susceptible of competing interpretations should be construed strictly in favor of the accused. E.g., People v. Home Insurance Co., 197 Colo. 260, 591 P.2d 1036 (1979); People v. Cornelison, 192 Colo. 337, 559 P.2d 1102 (1977). This rule of lenity, however, must not be employed in a manner that confines “the operation of the statute within limits narrower than those intended by the legislature, or destroys the intention of the law-making body.” Scheely v. People, 54 Colo. 136, 129 P. 201 (1912). The primary purpose of the rule of strict construction is to achieve a fair and reasonable result consistent with legislative intent. Van Gerpen v. Petersen, Colo., 620 P.2d 714 (1980).
In my view, the majority’s construction of section 18-4 — 409(2)(b) proceeds from a strained interpretation of words which are clear and unambiguous on their face. To alter the appearance of a motor vehicle is to cause it to become different in its external appearance without changing it into something else. See Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961) at 63. To disguise the appearance of a motor vehicle is to furnish it with a false identity or obscure the existence of its true identity. I know of no more effective way to alter or disguise the appearance of a motor vehicle than to change the vehicle’s license plate. The license plate is the most commonly used and readily available means of identification for a motor vehicle. In today’s world it serves the same function for identifying motor vehicles as a social security number serves to identify people. With the license plate one can obtain access to important information regarding the characteristics of both the owner of the vehicle and the vehicle itself, such as the owner’s name, his address, the registration number of the vehicle, and its make and model.
I view this 1979 statutory addition of subsection 18-4-409(2)(h), which expressly includes the unlawful attachment of an unrelated license plate to a motor vehicle as an aggravating factor, as nothing more than a legislative attempt to spell out in specific terms what was previously included within the general prohibition of section 18-4-402(2)(b). As such, the 1979 amend*853ment does not establish that, when the legislature enacted section 18-4-409(2)(b) in 1977, it intended to exclude the display of a false license plate from the disguising or altering prohibitions of subsection 18-4-409(2)(b).
The act of placing false license plates on a stolen motor vehicle causes the vehicle to assume an identity different from that which it actually has and, in my opinion, falls squarely within the express terms of the statutory proscription against altering or disguising the appearance of a motor vehicle in subsection 18-4-409(2)(b). I believe that the trial court correctly instructed the jury on this aspect of the case.