Court Opinion

ID: 9743495
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:34:47.586993+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:41.585022
License: Public Domain

BUCHANAN, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent, because the hallway of an apartment building is a “public place” within the meaning of Indiana’s public intoxication statute. To conclude otherwise is to uproot centuries of statutory and common law. The great Cardozo said, “What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly to be sacrificed.” 1
Our public intoxication statute is the evolutionary product of laws enacted over two thousand years ago.2 A more recent precursor of modern public intoxication laws, whether classified as statutory or common law, is a statute enacted by England’s Par*827liament in 1606.3 The penalties under that statute were a fine and commitment to the stocks for six hours, penalties which led Blackstone to conclude that the statute “presumes the offender will have regained his senses, and not be liable to do mischief to his neighbors.”4 “This comment on the underlying purpose of this statute is important [because] [i]t is not the drunkenness but the injury to other persons, committed under the influence of alcohol that is relevant in law.” Hall, Drunkenness as a Criminal Offense, supra at 297-98; Comment, The Law of Public Drunkenness, 34 Tenn.L. Rev. 490, 490-91 (1967); R. Perkins, Criminal Law 888-89 (2d ed. 1969)
Statutes descending from this 17th century English law have preserved the distinction between punishing intoxication itself and punishing public intoxication, which offends other citizens.5 Thus, modern statutes prohibit intoxication in specific places, such as streets or alleys, or in “public places.” See Annot., 8 A.L.R.3d 930 (1966).
Many states, including Indiana, have defined “public places” to mean a place where the public has a right to go or be. E.g., State v. Sowers, (1876) 52 Ind. 311. It “does not mean a place devoted solely to the uses of the public, but it means a place which is in point of fact public, as distinguished from private, a place that is visited by many persons and usually accessible to the neighboring public.” R. Perkins, supra at 890. In so delimiting public intoxication, the statutes do “not apply to . .. conduct unless it obtrudes itself offensively on the attention of others.” R. Anderson, Wharton’s Criminal Law & Procedure § 1021, at 216 (1957).
The courts, in determining whether certain conduct “obtrudes itself offensively on the attention of others” and therefore occurs in a place which is “in point of fact public,” have disagreed whether the curti-lage of a private residence is a public place. Compare State v. Sowers, supra (front yard of private residence not a public place), with People v. Olson, (1971) 18 Cal.App.3d 592, 96 Cal.Rptr. 132 (lawn, driveway, and front porch of private residence a public place). The differing opinions appear a result of differing interpretations of the words “public place”; for example, Indiana defines it as a place where the public has a right to go or be, whereas California defines it as a place which is accessible to the public.
In the context of the public intoxication statutes, however, a place where the public has a right to go or be includes a place which is accessible to the public, even though the reverse may not necessarily be true. A California opinion recognizes that the hallway of an apartment building is a public place. People v. Perez, (1976) 64 Cal.App.3d 297, 134 Cal.Rptr. 338. Not only is the hallway of an apartment building accessible to the public, it is a place where the public has a right to go or be. Intoxicated persons, be they tenants of the building or guests of tenants, are not guests of the remaining tenants. These remaining tenants are part of the “public” and should not be compelled to tolerate drunkenness in close proximity to their abode.
This construction of “public” is consistent with those opinions saying that common areas of hotels are within the purview of the statute, but that private rooms within the hotel are not public. Tackett v. Commonwealth, (1953) Ky., 261 S.W.2d 298; Lewis v. Commonwealth, (1923) 197 Ky. 449, 247 S.W. 749; Bordeaux v. State, (1892) 31 Tex.Cr.R. 37, 19 S.W. 603. Just as the rooms within a hotel are private and the common entryways public, so the apartments within an apartment building are private and the common entryways public.
No Indiana case suggests that the law of this State flows against the mainstream of American legal thought. Courts of this State have taken the view that privately owned property generally is not a public *828place, State v. Tincher, (1898) 21 Ind.App. 142, 51 N.E. 943, State v. Sowers, (1876) 52 Ind. 311, but it may be if the area is in point of fact made public. Heichelbech v. State, (1972) 285 Ind. 334, 281 N.E.2d 102 (service station). Various areas within an apartment complex may be a public place, depending upon their use.
State v. Moriarty (1881) 74 Ind. 103 is no bar to this conclusion. The holding in Mor-iarity is that an indictment which charged intoxication in a public street showed at least a prima facie case that the area was a public place; the indictment was not defective. Although the court did mention in dicta that the term “street” does not necessarily mean private ways or roads owned by private corporations, and cited cases dealing with assessments for improvements to privately owned roads, the court did not say that a privately owned road could never be a public place for purposes of the public intoxication statute. Again, privately owned areas may be used as public areas.
This is an age of high density population. Apartment dwellers who happen to be residents of homes connected by a common roof are not unlike multiple or single home dwellers abutting a public street, and should not be deprived of the protection of the public intoxication statute.6
I would affirm the convictions.

. Benjamin Cardozo, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928).

. “Consumption of intoxicating liquor, and efforts to control anti-social results are well-nigh universal phenomena. From the laws of the ancient Hebrews and the discourses of the Greek philosophers to the Anglo-Saxon dooms, and down to the present time, control of the harmful social effects of drunkenness has been a matter of public concern.” Hall, Drunkenness as a Criminal Offense, 32 J.Crim.L. & Criminology 297, 297 (1941-1942) (footnotes omitted) [hereinafter cited as Hall, Drunkenness as a Criminal Offense],

. 4 Jac.I, c. 5 (Eng. 1606).

. 4 Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England *64.

. In addition to public intoxication, habitual intoxication is punishable in some states. R. Perkins, supra at 891.

. The need for the public intoxication statute is not diminished by the existence of the disorderly conduct statute, IC § 35-45-1-3. The disorderly conduct statute does not prohibit certain conduct which would be prohibited by the pub-lie intoxication statute if done in a public place while intoxicated. See Hicks v. State, (1973) 260 Ind. 204, 294 N.E.2d 613, reh. denied, 260 Ind. 204, 296 N.E.2d 431; Miller v. State, (1972) 258 Ind. 79, 279 N.E.2d 222.