Court Opinion

ID: 9689968
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:50:29.704724+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:52.934792
License: Public Domain

*468SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.,
(dissenting). Prevention of crime is obviously preferable to apprehension and punishment of criminals after the commission of an offense. I do not believe, however, that the loitering ordinance at issue in this case is a constitutional means of attaining the important goals of crime prevention and deterrence.
The majority opinion finds the reasoning of the courts upholding similar loitering laws persuasive. I do not. I agree with the reasoning of the courts who have found similar loitering laws unconstitutionally vague. Therefore I dissent.
The Milwaukee Loitering Ordinance is based, as the majority opinion explains, on sec. 250.6 of the 1962 Model Penal Code. The Reporters who drafted commentaries to sec. 250.6 in 1980 themselves expressed concerns about its constitutionality.1 In a 1985 Expían-*469atory Note to Article 250 of the 1962 Model Penal Code (of which sec. 250.6 is a part), the Code Reporters cautioned that the constitutional background of the offenses in Article 250 (entitled Riot, Disorderly Conduct and Related Offenses) had changed significantly since promulgation of the Model Code in 1962 and that the courts had become more concerned about the vagueness of penal statutes.2
Vagueness is a due process issue under the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. The courts use a two part analysis to test a statute challenged on the grounds of vagueness: First, the statute must define the offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited (notice requirement). Second, the statute must define the offense in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement (requirement of minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement). Those charged with enforcing or applying the law cannot be relegated to creating their own standards of culpability instead of applying the standards prescribed in the law. See State v. Courtney, 74 Wis. 2d 705, 711, 247 N.W.2d 714 (1976); State v. Starks, 52 Wis. 2d 256, 262-63, 186 N.W.2d 245 (1971); Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 162, 168-70 (1972); Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357-58 (1983).
*470I am persuaded, as other judges have been,3 that the Model Penal Code’s loitering provision and similar laws do not meet constitutional specificity requirements as to scope, place or purpose.
The ordinance makes a person who “loiters or prowls in a place, at a time, or in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals under circumstances that warrant alarm for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity” culpable.
The word “loitering” connotes the act of hanging around without any apparent purpose. A law that prohibits loitering without further definition is unconstitutionally vague because it fails to distinguish between innocent conduct and conduct calculated to cause harm. Such a law fails to give adequate notice of what conduct is proscribed. See State v. Starks, supra 51 Wis. 2d at 263; City of Portland v. White, 495 P.2d 778, 779 (1972); City of Seattle v. Drew, 423 P.2d 522, 524 (Wash. 1967); Papachristou v. Jackson, 405 U.S. 156, 162 (1972); People v. Bright, 71 N.Y.2d 376, 520 N.E.2d 1355, 1359 (1988).
*471The phrases in the ordinance which attempt to narrow the scope of loitering to conduct which is in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals and under circumstances that warrant alarm do not cure the vagueness defect. They provide neither the actor nor the law enforcement officer with criteria by which to determine what is an unusual place, time or manner for a law abiding citizen to be out in public or, with the exception of flight, refusal to identify oneself and concealment, what circumstances warrant alarm. This loitering ordinance, unlike the ordinance upheld in Milwaukee v. Wilson, 96 Wis. 2d 11, 291 N.W.2d 452 (1980), does not require a specific intent to commit a crime.
Nor do the identification and explanation provisions of the ordinance cure the vagueness defect. There is no indication in the ordinance of the nature of the identification or explanation that might be adequate to dispel an officer’s alarm.
In this case the defendant’s response to the officer’s question of what he was doing was “nothing.” The very essence of loitering is “doing nothing.” “Doing nothing” may be very suspicious conduct and “nothing” is hardly an explanation of one’s conduct. But clearly the ordinance cannot constitutionally make a person culpable for doing nothing.
Courts have concluded that similar identification and explanation requirements in loitering laws are void for vagueness because they do not provide a standard for law enforcement officers to determine what a suspect has to do in order to satisfy the requirement. See, e.g., Kolender v. Lawson, supra, 461 U.S. at 358; People v. Berck, 32 N.Y.2d 567, 300 N.E.2d 411, 414 (1973); People v. Bright, supra, 520 N.E.2d at 1360.
*472In Kolender, the challenged statute required a person suspected of loitering to furnish “credible and reliable identification” upon a police officer’s demand. Justice O’Connor, writing for the majority of the United States Supreme Court, concluded that although the San Diego police chief offered examples of what might be “credible and reliable identification,” the statutory requirement was nonetheless dependent on police discretion, giving law enforcement personnel “a virtually unrestrained power to arrest and charge persons with a violation.” Kolender, supra, 461 U.S. at 360. The Court concluded that, because the standard was subjective, the law “furnishes a convenient tool for ‘harsh and discriminatory enforcement by local prosecuting officials, against particular groups deemed to merit their displeasure.’” Id., quoting Papachristou, supra 405 U.S. at 170.
The Milwaukee ordinance gives the suspect, upon being stopped, the opportunity to dispel any alarm, and thus avoid arrest. Like the statute in Kolender, the Milwaukee ordinance leaves the definition of this “opportunity” entirely up to the individual judgment of the police officer making the stop. It is the police officer who determines, without significant guidance from the ordinance, what circumstances cause “alarm,” and it is the police officer who decides, again without significant guidance from the ordinance, whether the suspect has adequately dispelled that alarm by identifying himself or herself and explaining his or her presence and conduct. The ordinance leaves all of the critical definitions up to the discretion of law enforcement and so, under Kolender, it violates the federal Constitution.4
*473The majority observes that “[ultimately, it is the trier of fact who decides if the suspect’s explanation ‘would have dispelled any alarm,’ not the police officer." At 447-448. It is important, however, to recognize that availability of a trial after arrest in no sense obviates the constitutional requirement that laws include minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement officials. Justice O'Connor put it this way in Kolender:
It would certainly be dangerous if the legislature could set a net large enough to catch all possible offenders, and leave it to the courts to step inside and say who could be rightfully detained, and who should be set at large. This would, to some extent, substitute the judicial for the legislative department of government. Kolender, supra, 461 U.S. at 358, n. 7, quoting United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 221 (1876).
The majority concludes that the Milwaukee loitering ordinance meets the objections this court articulated in Starks. At 447. I conclude that the loitering ordinance, like the statute struck down in Sparks, does not meet the standards the United States Supreme Court has established. Accordingly I dissent.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Nathan S. Heffernan joins in this dissent.

In any event, recent years have seen a dramatic upsurge in constitutional attacks on vagrancy and loitering statutes and in the success of those efforts ....
As a matter of constitutional policy, abrogation of loitering is arguably sound. There is irreducible indeterminancy in the definition of loitering, as there is necessarily discretion in the police to decide in the first instance what the ‘public safety demands’ or whether the circumstances ‘justify suspicion’ or ‘warrant alarm’ _If even the Model Code provision is unconstitutionally vague, as the Oregon decision suggests, then it seems likely that no general provision against loitering can be drafted to survive constitutional review. Of course, narrower proscriptions of loitering with specific purpose — e.g., to solicit deviate sexual relations — may continue to be valid, but there would be no provision to deal with the person who is obviously up to no good but whose precise intention cannot be ascertained. Most courts are willing to consider in a void-for vagueness analysis the need for some provision and the impossibility of achieving greater precision. This factor cuts strongly in favor of the constitutionality of the Model Code Provision. ALI, Model Penal Code and Commentaries, sec. 250.6, pp. 394, 396-97 (1980).

The Reporters wrote in 1985 as follows:
... the constitutional background of these offenses has changed significantly since promulgation of the Model Code in 1962. In general, judicial concern with the vagueness of penal legislation has increased; and expanding concepts of liberties protected under the first amendment have withdrawn many areas of expressive activity from legislative competance. A.L.I., Model Penal Code: Official Draft and Explanatory Notes, p. 191 (1985).

See, e.g., City of Portland v. White, 495 P.2d 778 (Or. App. 1972); City of Bellevue v. Miller, 88 Wash. 2d 539, 536 P.2d 603 (Wash. 1975); Fields v. City of Omaha, 810 F.2d 830 (8th Cir. 1987); People v. Berck, 32 N.Y.2d 567, 300 N.E.2d 411 (1975); People v. Bright, 71 N.Y.2d 376, 520 N.E.2d 1355 (1988).
For further discussion of the void for vagueness doctrine and loitering laws, see, e.g., Amsterdam, Federal Constitutional Restrictions on the Punishment of Crimes of Status, Crimes of General Obnoxiousness, Crimes of Displeasing Police Officers and the Like, 3 Criminal Law Bulletin 205, 216-224 (1967); Note, Stop-and-Identify Statutes After Kolender v. Lawson: Exploring the Fourth and Fifth Amendment Issues, 69 Iowa L. Rev. 1057 (1984); Note, Kolender v. Lawson: Fourth and Inches on Fourth Amendment Issues and Supreme Court Punts, 10 J. Contemp. Law 239 (1984).

The suggestion that a person could be arrested merely because he or she refuses to supply identification or an explanation also *473raises significant fifth amendment questions which are only summarily addressed by the majority opinion. See, e.g. Kolender, supra, 461 U.S. at 360, n. 9; A.L.I. Model Penal Code and Commentaries, sec. 250.6, pp. 397-98 (1980).