Court Opinion

ID: 9687222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:19:12.200772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:24.923125
License: Public Domain

McCown, J.,
dissenting.
This court has again held that the offense of “contributing to the delinquency” of a minor consists of any act which encourages, causes, or contributes to the delinquency of a child under 18 years of age. ■ A delinquent child is any child under 18 years of age who has violated any state law or city or village ordinance. *170On its face, therefore, the “contributing” statute makes criminal “any act,” regardless of intent or purpose, which encourages, causes, or contributes to the violation of any law of the state or any city or village ordinance by a minor under the age of 18 years.
The majority also reaffirm the position that it is sufficient to charge the commission of the crime in the general words of the statute without reference to any specific acts alleged to have been done. See State v. Simants, 182 Neb. 491, 155 N. W. 2d 788. It may be useless to repeat the discussion contained in the Simants dissent at 182 Neb. 497, 155 N. W. 2d 792. Nevertheless, recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States dealing with general issues of unconstitutional vagueness and overbroadness make it imperative that the matter be discussed once more.
No specific acts are charged in the information before us. The majority opinion, however, makes it clear that the defendant’s acts which support the conviction ■here consisted of furnishing the automobile used for a drinking party during which a minor drank beer and wine furnished by “other men in the automobile.” The defendant’s acts are summarized as furnishing the automobile used for a drinking party “in which a 15-year-old girl was allowed to participate.” That language would seem to make it a criminal offense to fail to prevent a minor from violating the law or to fail to prevent others from actively assisting the minor in the violation of law. The facts here also indicate that the defendant might well be described as an “undesirable” citizen whose conduct left much to be desired under any ordinary standards.
This court has consistently held that a criminal statute must give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what conduct is forbidden. That position has also been consistently upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States and recently strongly reaffirmed. In Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U. S. 156, 92 *171S. Ct. 839, 31 L. Ed. 2d 110 (1972), the court without dissent struck down the Jacksonville, Florida, vagrancy-ordinance as unconstitutional on its face. The court said: “This ordinance is void-for-vagueness, both in the sense that it ‘fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by statute,’ United States v. Harriss, 347 U. S. 612, 617, and because it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions. Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88; Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U. S. 242.”
The court also quoted from the case of United States v. Reese, 92 U. S. 214 (1875): “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.”
The court also referred to the language of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in dissent in Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507, 68 S. Ct. 665, 92 L. Ed. 840, in which he said: “Only a word needs to be said regarding Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U. S. 451. The case involved a New Jersey statute of the type that seek to control ‘vagrancy.’ These statutes are in a class by themselves, in view of the familiar abuses to which they are put. Definiteness is designedly avoided so as to allow the net to be cast at large, to enable men to be caught who are vaguely undesirable in the eyes of police and prosecution, although not chargeable with any particular offense.”
On June 29, 1972, the Supreme Court summarily vacated the judgment in Oyen v. Washington, 408 U. S. 933, 92 S. Ct. 2846, 33 L. Ed. 2d 745. In that case, the Supreme Court of Washington had previously held that a statute prohibiting a person “without a lawful purpose” to “willfully loiter” around a school building was not unconstitutional for overbreadth or for vagueness. 78 Wash. 2d 909, 480 P. 2d 766. Obviously, the Papachristou case was deemed determinative by the United States Supreme Court.
*172On June 1, 1971, the Supreme Court had perhaps telegraphed its later action in Papachristou by its decision in Coates v. City of Cincinnati, 402 U. S. 611, 91 S. Ct. 1686, 29 L. Ed. 2d 214. In that case, a Cincinnati, Ohio, ordinance made it a criminal offense for “three or more persons to assemble * * * on any * * * sidewalks, street corners, vacant lots, or mouths of alleys and there conduct themselves in a manner annoying to persons passing by, or occupants of adjacent buildings.” The ordinance was declared unconstitutional on its face in an opinion by Mr. Justice Stewart. The dissents tended to indicate agreement that the ordinance would be unconstitutional in many situations, but that it should not be declared unconstitutional on its face.
In the case before us, who shall determine what “act” “encourages, causes, or contributes” to a violation of any state law or city or village ordinance by a minor? The all-encompassing vagueness and over-breadth is largely due to the unusual definition of juvenile delinquency built into the Nebraska statutes since 1965 and retained in the proposed revision of the Nebraska Criminal Code. It would require a veritable Solomon to determine what particular conduct was proscribed under the statutory language. There are simply no ascertainable standards of guilt. Neither does the statute currently require even any criminal intent, nor does it make any difference whether the statute, or ordinance violated by the minor is civil or criminal.
“Encouraging” or “contributing” in Nebraska are just as vague and subjective as “annoying” in Ohio. “Delinquency” as defined by the Nebraska statute is much broader than “vagrancy” as defined in the Florida ordinances, and far more imprecise. It seems transparently clear that the current statute prohibiting any act which •encourages, causes, or contributes to the delinquency of a minor is unconstitutionally vague as well as unconstitutionally overbroad. The words - of the Supreme *173Court in Coates v. City of Cincinnati, supra, are appropriate. “It is said that the ordinance is broad enough to encompass many types of conduct clearly within the city’s constitutional power to prohibit. And so, indeed, it is. The city is free to prevent people from blocking sidewalks, obstructing traffic, littering streets, committing assaults, or engaging in countless other forms of anti-social conduct. It can do so through the enactment and enforcement of ordinances directed with reasonable specificity toward the conduct to be prohibited.”
The statute here is unconstitutional and the judgment of the district court should have been reversed.
'Clinton, J., joins in this dissent.