Court Opinion

ID: 9797343
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:18:46.140894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:54:28.335199
License: Public Domain

THOMPSON, Judge,
concurring.
¶24 I agree with the majority’s holding that the jury was properly instructed regarding flight and that defendant was not entitled to an instruction on disorderly conduct. As to the latter holding, however, my analysis differs, and I therefore write separately.
¶25 In my view, this court’s opinion in JV133051 is incorrect and should not be followed. In that case we held that a disorderly conduct conviction could not stand where the victim was not in repose before the charged conduct occurred. The error lies, I conclude, in the assumption that disorderly conduct requires proof that any particular person was in fact disturbed by a defendant’s conduct. The statute, A.R.S. § 13-2904(A), requires only that a defendant commit certain acts with the intent to disturb the peace or quiet of a person. It need not be proved that he actually disturbed somebody. See State v. Johnson, 112 Ariz. 383, 385, 542 P.2d 808, 810 (1975). JV133051 is based on a flawed premise, and I would not decide this ease on such a precedent.
¶26 Two other considerations, however, support the majority’s holding.
¶ 27 First, the mens rea for disorderly conduct (“intent to disturb the peace or quiet of a neighborhood, family or person”) is different than that for aggravated assault (intent to place “another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent physical injury”).
A “disturbance of the peace” is a disturbance of public tranquility or order and may be created by any act which molests inhabitants in the enjoyment of peace and quiet or excites disquietude or fear. The offense embraces a great variety of conduct destroying or menacing public order and tranquility and includes not only vio*573lent acts but acts and words likely to produce violence in others.
State ex rel. Williams v. Superior Court, 20 Ariz.App. 282, 283, 512 P.2d 45, 46 (1973) (citations omitted). A charge of aggravated assault, conversely, does not require proof that a defendant intend to cause fear or other mental disquietude. See LaFave & Scott, Substantive Criminal Law § 7.16(b) át n. 26 (citing Prosser & Keeton on Torts § 10 (5th ed. 1984) (“Apprehension is not the same thing as fear”),2 and People v. Gardner, 402 Mich. 460, 265 N.W.2d 1, 7 (1978) (victim need not be in fear to sustain assault charge)). Thus, aggravated assault could be committed by the display or handling of a gun by a person who neither intends nor causes the victim to suffer any disquietude at all. Because aggravated assault could be committed as charged in this ease without the commission of disorderly conduct (which requires an intent to disquiet), disorderly conduct is not a lesser-included offense here, and the trial court did not err in refusing to instruct on it.
¶ 28 Second, as in State v. Lara, 183 Ariz. 233, 235, 902 P.2d 1337, 1339 (1995), the evidence in this ease does not support the requested lesser-included instruction. Defendant fired his gun at close range through a door behind which he knew his victims were situated. It is not possible that the jury could have found that the victims were merely disturbed. See id. If the jury had believed that defendant shot merely reflexively, as he contended at trial, and not intentionally, the jury would not have found the requisite intent for aggravated assault and could not have found it for disorderly conduct.

. Prosser & Keeton cite in turn to the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 24 cmt. b (1977), which distinguishes between "apprehension” and "fright” in assault cases:
It is not necessary that the other believe that the act done by the actor will be effective in inflicting the intended contact upon him. It is enough that he believes that the act is capable of immediately inflicting the contact upon him unless something further occurs. Therefore, the mere fact that he can easily prevent the threatened contact by self-defensive measures which he feels amply capable of taking does not prevent the actor's attempt to inflict the contact upon him from being an actionable assault.