Court Opinion

ID: 9536588
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:03:00.802575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:48.274712
License: Public Domain

ERWIN, Justice,
with whom RABIN-OWITZ, C. J., joins (concurring).
In its majority opinion this Court has today decided that AS 11.45.030(a)(2) as amended may and should be so narrowly construed as to rescue it from a successful challenge to its constitutionality as drafted. The majority has nevertheless concluded that on the record before us the dismissal below must be affirmed for want of sufficient evidence for conviction. That the trial court’s judgment should be affirmed I am in agreement. I am of the opinion, however, that the court has erred in its treatment of this statute.
In imposing the judicial “gloss” necessary to cure AS 11.45.030(a)(2) of constitutional infirmities, the majority has at least tacitly admitted that without these palliatives the statute is on its face unconstitutionally overbroad and vague. I heartily concur in this conclusion.
In Marks v. City of Anchorage, 500 P.2d 644 (Alaska 1972), we explained the doctrines of vagueness and overbreadth as follows :
Although the overbreadth and void-for-vagueness doctrines are related and, at least in the first amendment area, not wholly separable, they are functionally and doctrinally distinct. The overbreadth doctrine has evolved to give adequate breathing room to specific first *323amendment freedoms; a statute violates the doctrine when constitutionally-protected conduct as well as conduct which the state can legitimately regulate are included within the ambit of the statute’s prohibition. By contrast, specific constitutional guarantees are not necessarily implicated when a statute is declared void for vagueness. The latter doctrine comes into play when the statutory language is so indefinite that the perimeters of the prohibited zone of conduct are unclear; a statute may be unconstitutionally vague even though no activities specifically protected by the Constitution are outlawed. A vague statute violates the due> process clause both because it fails to give adequate notice to the ordinary citizen of what is prohibited and because its indefinite contours confer unbridled discretion on government officials and thereby raise the possibility of uneven and discriminatory enforcement.1
Applying these criteria it is clear that AS 11.45.030(a)(2) is unconstitutionally vague. Absent judicial concretization, the ordinary citizen desiring to comply with the law would be forced to speculate whether he had been presented with a “lawful order” to leave the area where an offense had occurred. Moreover, the very nature of the prohibited conduct — the failure to obey a police command — lends itself too readily to arbitrary and discretionary enforcement under the statute. In short, the provision fails to sufficiently define the circumstances under which a police order to disperse from the scene of a criminal occurrence is an appropriate exercise of police power.
To an equally onerous degree, the statute as enacted is constitutionally deficient because it is overbroad. Clearly, the provision places arbitrary power in the hands of police officers which could be used to prohibit conduct which is constitutionally protected. It enables the police, for example, to disperse persons exercising their rights of free speech and assembly at a political rally because some person on the fringe of the assembled crowd had there engaged in some unspecified criminal conduct having perhaps nothing to do with the rally itself or the others there assembled.
The state, appellant herein, has not questioned that serious constitutional shortcomings are apparent from the specific terms of the statute. The majority opinion reflects the same persuasion. Under, however, the imprimatur of Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 1953, 32 L.Ed.2d 584 (1972),2 and in recognition of the duty set forth in Hoffman v. State, 404 P.2d 644, 646 (Alaska 1965), and Stock v. State, 526 P.2d 3 (Alaska 1974), to reasonably construe statutes to “avoid a danger of unconstitutionality,” the court today has engaged in extensive repair work to remedy the deficiencies inherent in the language of the statute.
I question that AS 11.45.030(a)(2) as now construed by the majority completely satisfies these major constitutional objections. Moreover, while I do not dispute our duty to construe statutes constitutionally where reasonable, and while I recognize that in Marks we acknowledged that the offer of a saving construction might have enabled us to rescue the Anchorage ordinance from its deficiencies,3 I note that such a remedial approach is not mandatory. Clearly we must temper our obligation to construe statutes constitutionally with a careful concern for the maintenance of a proper separation between the judicial and legislative functions.
Even if this statute is capable of remedial construction, which I seriously doubt, I *324am of the opinion that to do so is to engage in unwarranted and unreasonably extensive judicial legislation. The judicial gloss imposed by the majority is made up of almost whole cloth. It seems questionable, for example, that it is a wholly “reasonable,” let' alone necessary inference that in delimiting the operation of the statute to those instances "where a crime has occurred” the legislature actually intended to criminalize only those “wilfull” refusals to disperse which act to “substantially impede” an officer in the performance of his duties in "effecting an arrest, in investigating a crime, or in insuring the public safety.” 4 I am unable to discern from the history or language of the provision a clear indication that the legislature ever had in mind any such specific limitations on this exercise of the police power.5 It seems equally likely, in fact, that what was at least partly envisioned in this provision was the grant of a broadly discretionary power to “break up” assemblages when any sort of criminal activity can be identified in the vicinity.6 As a result, not only do the terms “crime” and “lawful order” pose a significant vagueness problem, they also threaten that “adequate breathing room” assured to first amendment freedoms.7
The open-ended language employed in AS 11.45.030(a)(2) constitutes such an unfettered grant of discretionary police power as to require extensive judicial prosthesis to- not only solidify its impermissibly vague contours, but to obviate its potential “chilling effect” upon the free exercise of first amendment freedoms.8 Even were I convinced that it would satisfy constitutional objections, in the absence of more concrete legislative guidelines I would decline to judicially legislate this necessary limiting “gloss.”

. 500 P.2d at 646 (footnotes omitted).

. The majority seems to have completely disregarded the extensive criticism of this case which is to be found in Marks, where we noted, for example, that
Gotten is a perplexing opinion, out of the mainstream of the United States Supreme Court precedents, most of which were not cited by the Court, and its effects on the vagueness and overbreadth doctrines must be considered extremely uncertain.
500 P.2d at 654.

. 500 P.2d at 657.

. P. 322 supra.

. It is significant, for example, that there are no guidelines as to what magnitude of “crime” is sufficient to trigger the statute; that there is no limitation on the size of the area around the criminal occurrence which may reasonably be cleared to avoid any “impedance that there is no indication of the proper scope of a “lawful” order.

. It may be noted that specific statutes already exist in Alaska which regulate and proscribe certain types of conduct with which AS 11.45.030(a)(2) as construed by the majority seems to be concerned. See AS 11.45.-020 (riot and unlawful assembly) and AS 11.30.210 (obstructing an officer).

. P. 322 — 323 & note 1 supra.

. Note that in Stock, the most recent example of constitutional construction cited by the majority, we observed that we were not there dealing with “a possible restriction on the exercise of first amendment rights [and no contention could be made that that statute had] a subterfugal purpose or effect of curtailing the exercise of protected political or individual rights to speech, association, privacy and the like.” 526 P. 2d at 12 (footnote omitted).