Court Opinion

ID: 9696250
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:42:29.89622+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:20.169426
License: Public Domain

BECKER, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur in Division I to IV and the results. While I have doubts as to the constitutionality of the statute, I accept the majority’s reasoning on the point. For cases pointing the other way see Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576, 89 S.Ct. 1354, 22 *814L.Ed.2d 572; Long Island Vietnam Moratorium Committee v. Cahn, 437 F.2d 344 (2 Cir. 1970). Also the evidence is sufficient to justify a finding of an intentional violation. I cannot concur in Division V holding intent to violate the statute is unnecessary.
Mr. Justice Jackson wrote at length on the problem of intent as a necessary element of crime in Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 250, 251, 72 S.Ct. 240, 243, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952), and said in part:
“The contention that an injury can amount to a crime only when inflicted by intention is no provincial or transient notion. It is as universal and persistent in mature systems of law as belief in freedom of the human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose between good and evil. A relation between some mental element and punishment for a harmful act is almost as instinctive as the child’s familiar exculpatory ‘But I didn’t mean to,’ and has afforded the rational basis for a tardy and unfinished substitution of deterrence and reformation in place of retaliation and vengeance as the motivation for public prosecution. Unqualified acceptance of this doctrine by English common law in the Eighteenth Century was indicated by Blackstone’s sweeping statement that to constitute any crime there must first be a ‘vicious will.’ Common-law commentators of the Nineteenth Century early pronounced the same principle, although a few exceptions not relevant to our present problem came to be recognized.”
This court used similar reasoning in State v. Schultz, 242 Iowa 1328, 1331, 1334, 50 N.W.2d 9, 11, when we said:
“Whether intent is a necessary element of a statutory crime is a matter of statutory construction. We said, in State v. Dunn, 202 Iowa 1188, 1189, 211 N.W. 850, 851: ‘Whether a criminal intent or guilty knowledge is an essential element of a statutory offense is to be determined as a matter of construction from the language of the act, in connection with its manifest purpose and design.’ * * *.
“It was incumbent upon the State to prove that the sale to the minor was made with the knowledge, or by the direction, sanction or approval of the defendant. The record is barren of any such showing. We are not disposed to extend further the doctrine of guilt without intent or knowledge.”
It seems to me to be of particular importance in this type case that the finder of fact, judge or jury, be required to find intent to desecrate the flag. The precise question considered here was analyzed in depth by the Supreme Court of Washington. State v. Turner, 474 P.2d 91, 95, 96 (Wash.1970). The case is well worth reading. A short quotation is apropos:
“The statute in question does, as we have noted, employ language implying that some evil intent or purpose must be shown. Words such as deface, defile, defy or cast contempt upon strongly imply that the described conduct shall be held criminally actionable only when the interdicted conduct is done with an evil design or purpose. If this were not so, the legislature could readily have said otherwise.
“The idea that there must be an intent to desecrate and hold up to contempt is supported by an absence until quite recently of national legislation on the subject. In 1968, the Congress broadened the application of an existing District of Columbia statute into a national law. Public Law 90-381, of § 1; 82 Stat. 291, 18 U.S.C. § 700 (1968). This statute, unlike that under inquiry here (RCW 9.-86.030), makes it a criminal offense knowingly to cast contempt upon the flag either by publicly mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning or trampling upon ft * * *
“Accordingly, unless the statute expressly eliminates the element of intent *815or design or defines the kinds of offenses which, by their very nature, are classified judicially as mala prohibita, the ingredients of intent, design and purpose should be deemed indispensable to a proof of guilt. To hold otherwise, would make anyone criminally liable who accidentally burned or walked upon the flag in public or unintentionally or accidentally committed some other act toward it which, if intent were present, would clearly constitute a defacing or defilement or a holding up to contempt.”
See also Morissette v. United States, supra; West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 87 L.Ed. 1628; City of Seattle v. Jones, 3 Wash.App. 431, 475 P.2d 790 (1970); State v. Hennings, 3 Wash.App. 483, 475 P.2d 926 (1970).
All of the above cases strongly militate against this court’s present gratuitous elimination of the element of intent from flag desecration cases. In the words of our prior case we should “not be disposed to extend further the doctrine of guilt without intent or knowledge.”
RAWLINGS, LeGRAND and REY-NOLDSON, JJ., join in this special concurrence.