Court Opinion

ID: 9564195
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:55:54.01436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:16.357079
License: Public Domain

Rosellini, J.
(dissenting) — The defendants in these cases were charged with crimes having knowledge as one of their *520elements. The same legislature which prescribed the elements of these crimes furnished its own definition of the word "knowledge", giving it the meaning which it intended it to have where it is included as an element of a crime. That definition includes both actual and constructive knowledge. The definition of constructive knowledge contained in this act is one well known to the law and one which has long enjoyed judicial approval.
It is well settled that the power to decide what acts shall be criminal, to define crimes, and to provide what the penalty shall be is legislative. Hendrix v. Seattle, 76 Wn.2d 142, 456 P.2d 696 (1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 948, 25 L. Ed. 2d 129, 90 S. Ct. 969 (1970); McInturf v. Horton, 85 Wn.2d 704, 538 P.2d 499 (1975), affirmed that case upon this issue, while overruling its holding upon another. Thus, the question whether knowledge is an element of a crime is legislative, not judicial. And if the legislature can omit the element of knowledge entirely from its definition of a crime, by what logic can we deny it the right to make constructive knowledge an element?
Here, the jury was instructed in the words of the statute defining knowledge. I can find nothing in the cited United States Supreme Court cases which would indicate that such an instruction offends due process. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 25 L. Ed. 2d 368, 90 S. Ct. 1068 (1970), was a case in which the court held that due process requires proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, whether juvenile or adult. There the juvenile judge had instructed that proof must be made by a preponderance of the evidence. We do not have that issue in this case.
Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 61 L. Ed. 2d 39, 99 S. Ct. 2450 (1979), was a case in which the high court held that an instruction advising the jury that the law presumes a person to have intended the natural and probable consequences of his acts operated to shift the burden of proof from the State to the defendant (upon the element of intent) where there was no instruction delineating the *521quantum of proof which would be needed to rebut the presumption.
In neither of those cases did the court have under consideration a legislative definition of an element of a crime. Neither is authority for the majority position here. Certainly they do not stand for the proposition that the legislature may not define such words as "intent" or "knowledge" for purposes of its own criminal statutes. There have been rare instances where a legislative body has adopted such an arbitrary definition of a word that it does not logically and fairly describe that which it purports to define. A definition may be so far afield that it does not give notice of the forbidden conduct or it may result in imposing punishment for conduct which could not be otherwise prohibited. See Seattle v. Buchanan, 90 Wn.2d 584, 605-06, 584 P.2d 918 (1979). It is not suggested that either of those evils is present here.
The majority seems to feel that the legislative designation of the elements of a crime and its definition of those elements must make allowances for defenses such as mental irresponsibility and intoxication. The statute defining the crime requires a person to respond to the standard of reasonableness. It can hardly be conceived that the legislature intended that a person having information which would put an ordinary person on notice that he is about to engage in harmful conduct, should escape liability by alleging that he simply wasn't paying attention to what was going on.
If, for some legitimate reason, a defendant was incapable of understanding that which a reasonable person would have understood, the statutes allow him to set that fact up. As a matter of fact, there is nothing in the statute to preclude a defendant from showing that he did not "have" the pertinent information, even though a reasonable person would have perceived it under the same circumstances. That is what the defendants attempted to show in this case. The likelihood of jury acceptance of such evidence is another matter.
*522Reading this statute, it is apparent to me that the legislature intended that persons who ought to have known what they were doing should be punished the same as persons who actually knew. It was for the legislature to decide whether the two groups are equally culpable, and not a judgment to be made by this court.
In none of the cases before us could a sensible jury be expected to return any verdict other than that which was rendered, regardless of the semantic changes that may be injected into the instructions. If these changes have significance, they amount to a rewriting of the statue, without excuse or authority. If they have no impact on the legislative provision, they are not of sufficient substance to warrant the granting of two new trials, both of which are almost certain to be not only burdensome to the taxpayers and the lower courts but useless to the defendants as well.
I would affirm the judgment.
Wright and Dolliver, JJ., concur with Rosellini, J.
Reconsideration denied July 3, 1980.