Court Opinion

ID: 9743209
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:28:26.401767+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:39.964932
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
The purposes served by restricting the constitutional challenge of a statute defining a crime, to the motion to dismiss and to a first adjudication at the trial level, are to grant the accused a fair opportunity to present the issue, and to provide the State with an ample opportunity to defend the statute, and to give the courts the best possible foundation for addressing so important an issue. As a general rule, I « would agree with the Court of Appeals that the failure of the accused to raise this constitutional issue in a proper procedural mode in the trial court should result in the refusal of an appellate court to address the issue on its merits on appeal. CJ Dissent ing opinion of Judge Conover in this case and Marchand v. State, (1982) Ind.App., 435 N.E.2d 284 and Salrin v. State, (1981) Ind.App., 419 N.E.2d 1351. However, I could not agree that the issue has been waived in the sense that it has been permanently given up or relinquished. And the general rule should be subject to an exception when the criminal statute is challenged as invalid upon its face, for in such instance all of the aforementioned purposes served by the proper procedure would be satisfied. Such is the situation confronting the Court in the case at hand, and therefore it is perfectly legitimate for this Court to meet the constitutional issue.
One cannot study the opinion in Schad v. Borough of Mount Ephraim, (1981) 452 U.S. 61, 101 S.Ct. 2176, 68 L.Ed.2d 671, without concluding that a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court holds to the opinion that nude dancing upon the stage of a theater, which dancing is not obscene, is protected against State restriction by the First Amendment. The case reinforces the position taken in dissent in State v. Baysinger, (1979) 272 Ind. 236, 397 N.E.2d 580, that the Indiana public indecency statute wherein it renders nudity in a public place a crime, is grossly overbroad as sweeping constitutionally protected conduct within its proscription, and is therefore unconstitutional on its face. Indeed, it is so over-broad as to be outside the reach of a narrowing judicial interpretation. Due respect for the legislative prerogative dictates invalidation of this part of the statute, and thus in effect a remand to the legislature to make plain through its own added language what societal problems it perceives to exist in this area at this point in history, and to draw the line between legitimate public nudity and eriminal public nudity.
HUNTER, J., concurs.