Court Opinion

ID: 9645548
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:28:07.998303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:29.417463
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, Justice,
dissenting.
If lawyers and judges would just learn to talk the way regular folks do, we would avoid a good many problems. Like, for instance, this case.
*24When asked his name, defendant was confronted with three choices: he could remain silent (I agree that maybe he did not know that, and that maybe, for those who put a high priority on not irritating law-enforcement people, silence is not such a good approach anyway); he could tell the trooper his name; or he could make up or “borrow” a name. Defendant took the last course: he gave false information. Nobody asked him to do that. Nobody extracted the phony name. Nobody coerced defendant into proffering a bogus identification — he volunteered it. He made up his answer. He lied. His intention was to avoid detection and to send the police off on a wild goose chase.
One need not be a lawyer or wordsmith or semanticist to understand that a statute proscribing the volunteering of false information to a law-enforcement officer is violated when Denny Valentin, wanted on a stolen vehicle charge, tells a state trooper that his name is Ramon Velez. I do not think the crowd down at the corner newsstand would have nearly the trouble with this simple, eminently sensible statute that this Court has.
I would reverse and remand to the trial court with an order to reinstate count two of the indictment.
For affirmance — Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN, GARIBALDI and STEIN — 6.
For reversal and remandment — Justice CLIFFORD — 1.