Court Opinion

ID: 9733786
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:17:20.342947+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:44.045469
License: Public Domain

Krivosha,C.J.,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent from the majority opinion in this case. As the majority notes, before one may be found guilty of violating Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28-907(l)(a) (Cum. Supp. 1984), three elements must be present: (1) there must be a false statement to a police officer; (2) the statement must be given with the intent to impede an investigation; and (3) the investigation must be of an actual criminal matter. Although it *471is obvious that a false statement was made to a police officer, I do not believe that the evidence in this case will permit a finder of fact to conclude that the second and third elements of the crime have been established beyond a reasonable doubt.
As noted by the majority, there was no investigation of an actual criminal matter going on, at least as long as Officer Fitzgerald was involved. When he radioed his superior officer, Sergeant Koss, explaining that he was unable to locate the Marti girl, he was told that there was not much more he could do. No one intended to conduct any further investigation or do anything more about the matter.
Therefore, in order to find that there was an investigation of an actual criminal matter which was impeded, one must find that somehow the activity of Trooper McGuire constituted such an investigation. In my view the evidence will not support that conclusion. Trooper McGuire testified that after he overheard the conversation between Officer Fitzgerald and Sergeant Koss, he drove over to Bolling’s trailer court, where he met Mrs. Marti. His purpose of taking Mrs. Marti into his cruiser and going to the Shanklin trailer was simply to get Mrs. Marti’s daughter. Specifically, he was asked the following questions and gave the following answers: “Q- What did you do at that time? A-1 told her [Mrs. Marti] if she wanted her daughter home to get in my patrol car, we’d go get her daughter.”
When specifically asked what actual crimes he was investigating, he answered:
From what Mrs. Marti had described and the environment she had described, I felt that there was a possibility of her daughter being a minor in possession of alcohol. I also felt that if — was fact what she had described in the confrontation that she had with the other people in the trailer house and the environment, that there may be a delinquent minor along with maybe somebody contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
(Emphasis supplied.) Further, on cross-examination Trooper McGuire testified:
The reason I went over to Tanya Dubey’s was to assist Mrs. Marti in returning her child to her home. The information that Mrs. Marti gave me put information into my head that in fact, after I got to that trailer house, there may be *472crimes being committed.
(Emphasis supplied.)
On the basis of that testimony, I find it difficult to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that there was an investigation of an actual criminal matter taking place. This is, in my view, further supported by the fact that no one was charged with being a minor in possession or contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Section 28-907(l)(a) also mandates that the statement must be given with the intent to impede an investigation. The record is, however, devoid of any evidence indicating that Ewing either knew or should have known that Trooper McGuire was conducting an investigation of “an actual criminal matter.” The majority suggests that he should have known that there was the possibility that someone was guilty of being a minor in possession or of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I am unable to equate “possibilities” with the need that the defendant have an intent to impede an investigation of an “actual criminal matter” before one may be guilty of violating § 28-907(l)(a). Ewing might just as well have concluded that the trooper had come to secure custody of a runaway, as the trooper in fact told Mrs. Marti he was doing, and was not at all concerned about a criminal investigation. It would seem that a person must know, or should have known, that an investigation of an actual criminal matter is being conducted before a person can intend to impede that investigation by giving false information. Here, even the majority admits that there was only a possibility that Ewing knew or should have known that an actual criminal investigation was ongoing. It does not seem to me to be too onerous a burden to require a police officer to advise persons who are being interrogated that the officer is in the process of conducting an investigation of an actual criminal matter. In my view the record does not establish the requisite intent necessary to constitute the crime charged.
Ewing is not to be commended for lying, but the fact that he committed a moral sin does not equate to establishing proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the commission of a criminal act.
Caporale, J., joins in this dissent.