Court Opinion

ID: 9747052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:54:22.503947+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:19.737711
License: Public Domain

VOIGT, Justice,
specially concurring, in which HILL, Justice, joins.
[131] I agree with the majority of the Court that we have previously found statutory language such as that at issue here to be constitutional, so I coneur out of respect for the doctrine of stare decisis I write separately only to voice my continued difficulty with a criminal statute that is so broadly drawn. See Giles v. State, 2004 WY 101, ¶¶ 49-59, 96 P.3d 1027, 1043-46 (Wyo.2004) (Voigt, J., specially concurring). The problem with such statutes is exemplified by the emphasized language below in a portion of the quotation from Sorenson v. State, 604 P.2d 1031, 1085 (Wyo.1979) contained in the majority opinion:
*1185(Citations omitted; emphasis added.) It is not up to juries to be pointing out, after the fact, what conduct is criminal; that is a legislative task. That task must be performed with such specificity that juries are not left to
decide for themselves whether an act should, or should not, be criminalized.