Court Opinion

ID: 9632216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:07:01.929421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:29:49.972757
License: Public Domain

Bullock, District Judge
assigned, dissenting: First, I must respectfully disagree with the majority’s construction of K.S.A. 21-4303(b) in which the explanatory notes of the Kansas Judicial Council, published by the legislature as footnotes to the statute, are consciously and purposely disregarded.
A prefatory word of explanation is in order. The Kansas Judicial Council was established by the legislature in 1927, L. 1927, ch. 187, §§ 1 et seq. (now K.S.A. 20-2201 et seq.). The Council consists of members of the appellate and trial benches, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the bar of this court. From time to time the legislature requests that complicated legal issues be studied by the Council and its various subcommittees and that proposed statutes be drafted by the Council to clarify or correct legislatively perceived legal problems. Upon the conclusion of this often arduous and lengthy study of the problem by the Council, a statute, or set of statutes, is drafted and forwarded to the legislature for its consideration. Frequently, these statutory drafts are accompanied by lengthy and carefully prepared ex*225planatory notes, which are intended to assist the legislature in understanding and interpreting the proposed legislation and the effect its adoption would have on the law of Kansas.
Upon those occasions when the legislature, elects to adopt the proposed statutes drafted by the Council, it frequently publishes the Council’s explanatory notes as footnotes (or headnotes) to the statutory enactment, presumably as an aid to the bench, bar, and public in understanding what was intended by the enactment. (See K.S.A. 77-133[d] in which the legislature requires its Revisor of Statutes to publish such notes in the Kansas statute books.) The importance placed upon the accuracy and completeness of these notes by the legislature's Revisor (K.S.A. 1992 Supp. 46-, 1211), operating under statutory legislative mandate, is amply illustrated by the majority’s own example of the pre-publication revision of the Council notes by the Revisor and Professor Wilson, Judicial Council draftsman, following the 1969 enactment of the Kansas Criminal Code. Clearly, the purpose of those revisions was to make the notes reflect legislative changes made in the statutes proposed by the Council at the time of legislative enactment. See Arredondo v. Duckwall Stores, Inc., 227 Kan. 842, 610 P.2d 1107 (1980). In other words, the objective of the revision was to make certain the published notes accurately explained the modified statutes as actually enacted.
The practice of publishing explanatory Judicial Council notes with enacted statutes parallels the legislative practice of publishing the drafters’ commentaries to the Uniform Commercial Code, K.S.A. 84-1-101 et seq., and this court’s practice in publishing the drafters’ commentaries to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Kansas Supreme Court Rule 226 (1992 Kan. Ctl. R. Annot. 238), both of which commentaries are routinely consulted in judicial constructions of the provisions they explain, always without the prior condition of ambiguity.
In the case at bar, the majority has held that K.S.A. 21-4303(b) is “clear and unambiguous” and that it is the law of this state that in such cases the court must apply the statute as written and cannot consult the explanatory Judicial Council notes to divine the intent of the legislature in adopting the statute, albeit virtually conceded by the majority that to do so would require *226an opposite result in this case and undoubtedly in other cases in the future.
I do not disagree that there is authority in our decisions for the rule purportedly followed by the majority. Where I disagree is that it is our only authority, or for that matter that it is the correct or even “majority” rule of this court. Although I have hot conducted an exhaustive search, I have reviewed the last 101 cases since 1965 in which the appellate courts of this state have consulted the explanatory notes of the Kansas Judicial Council in construing statutes to which those notes relate: Of those 101 cases, 2 apply the rule relied upon by the majority. State v. Roudybush, 235 Kan. 834, 846, 686 P.2d 100 (1984); State v. Bagemehl, 123 Kan. 210, 212-13, 515 P.2d 1104 (1973). On the contrary, in the remaining 99 cases, the court has simply referred to the notes in construing the statute, without any reference to a need to first find ambiguity. See, e.g., State v. Warren, 252 Kan. 169, 177, 843 P.2d 224 (1992); State v. Grissom, 251 Kan. 851, 889, 840 P.2d 1142 (1992); State v. Jordan, 250 Kan. 180, 183, 825 P.2d 157 (1992); State v. Scott, 250 Kan. 350, 358, 827 P.2d 733 (1992); State v. Getz, 250 Kan. 560, 565, 566, 830 P.2d 830 (1992). In both cases where the precondition of ambiguity is mentioned, the statute in issue is construed contrary to the explanatory note. In the remaining 99 cases where no ambiguity is required to consult the note, 95 cases construe the statute consistent with the note; the four exceptions are: State v. Noah, 246 Kan. 291, 293-94, 788 P.2d 257 (1990); State v. Cathey, 241 Kan. 715, 723, 741 P.2d 738 (1987); City of Junction City v. Lee, 216 Kan. 495, 503, 532 P.2d 1292 (1975); State v. Wilson, 11 Kan. App. 2d 504, 506-07, 728 P.2d 1332 (1986). In no cases has the court invoked the ambiguity requirement, found an ambiguity, and then construed the statute consistent with the explanatory note!
So what is the law of Kansas concerning whether the trial bench, bar, and public can rely on' the Judicial Council notes in interpreting statutes to which they apply? Is it the rule that one is usually safe in relying on the explanatory notes, except for those occasional cases where a different result is judicially desired? I trust not.
*227In my view, Judicial Council notes, like any other legislatively published explanatory notes, or commentaries, should always be consulted by the court, as they undoubtedly are by the trial bench, bar, and public alike, in construing and interpreting any statutory enactment. Further, in my view, the appellate judicial construction made as a result thereof should then be at least arguably consistent with those notes and commentaries. To do otherwise is to create judicially crafted traps for the unwary. The thought of enticing the citizenry to usually rely upon the notes, but then occasionally “tagging them out” when they do, especially where the subject is a crime, offends my notion of due process and fair play. In my view, clear prior notice of that which is proscribed by the criminal law is such a fundamental element of due process as to no longer require the citation of authority.
Second, turning to the statutes in question, I also respectfully disagree with how they have been construed by the majority, perhaps even without regard to the Judicial Council notes, but especially when the notes are considered.
K.S.A. 21-4303 provides:
“Gambling is: (a) Making a bet; or (b) entering or remaining in a gambling place with intent to make a bet, to participate in a lottery, or to play a gambling device. Gambling is a class B misdemeanor.”
K.S.A. 21-4302(5) provides:
“A ‘gambling place’ is any place, room, building, vehicle, tent or location which is used for any of the following: Making and settling bets; receiving, holding, recording or forwarding bets or offers to bet; conducting lotteries; or playing gambling devices. Evidence that the place has a general reputation as a gambling place or that, at or about the time in question, it was frequently visited by persons known to be commercial gamblers or known as frequenters of gambling places is admissible on the issue of whether it is a gambling place.” (Emphasis added.)
If a single gambling event (such as the poker party in the case at bar) converts any place to a “gambling place,” as the majority has held, why was the italicized sentence of K.S.A. 21-4302(5), above, added by the legislature to the definition? Does this not at least create an ambiguity which, even under the majority’s view, would allow the court to consult the notes to K.S.A. 21-4303(b), where we would learn that a “gambling place” is “a *228structure, one of whose principal uses is for making and settling bets”?
The problem created by the majority’s construction of these statutes is evident in Justice Allegrucci’s dissent, where he correctly observes that a “home, school, church, monastery, or nursing home” can be converted into a “gambling place” if on one occasion bets or offers to bet are made therein. Note that no actual bet is even required! In K.S.A. 21-4303(b) it is a crime to enter a “gambling place” with the intent to make a bet. The majority has held any place is a “gambling place” if one poker party or other gambling event occurs (perhaps requiring two or more bets). “Gambling” is defined by K.S.A. 21-4303(b) as entering a “gambling place” intending to bet.
Thus, any place into which a person comes offering to make bets becomes a “gambling place” whether or not the bets are actually accepted.
If this result seems absurd, consider what occurs when K.S.A. 21-4304 is added to the mix, as it will be in future cases. This statute makes it a felony for someone to “operate” a “gambling place.” Under the majority’s opinion, a person could come into my chambers offering to bet me and my court reporter lunch on next Saturday’s game, and whether or not these offers to bet are ever accepted, my chambers have been converted into a “gambling place.” In managing my chambers on a regular daily basis, have I then “operated” such a “gambling place” and in so doing committed a class E felony?
The court has held “a statute should never be given a construction that leads to uncertainty, injustice, or confusion,” or that would lead to an absurd result. State v. Howard, 235 Kan. 236, 247, 679 P.2d 197 (1984).
All of the problems described in this opinion could be rather simply and easily avoided if the majority would just consider both the statutes and the Council notes and find that a “gambling place” is something more than any place a single gambling event (such as the poker party at bar) occurs.
The majority concludes this construction would “insert an additional element of proof.” Again, I respectfully disagree. The element is “entering a gambling place.” The italicized sentence *229of K.S.A. 21-4302(5) and the notes to K.S.A. 21-4303 simply define what a “gambling place” is.
Before concluding this opinion, perhaps it is important to observe that none of the foregoing should be read to mean that what the defendants did in the case before us was “right” or even “legal,” for that matter. They came to the location in question to bet, and bet they did. That, of course, is a crime under K.S.A. 21-4303(a). But that is not the crime with which they were charged. They were charged with entering a “gambling place” and, in my view, this has not been proved.
I must therefore respectfully dissent, and like Justice Allegrucci, I would affirm the Court of Appeals and reverse the district court.