Court Opinion

ID: 9701793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:38:32.286488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:29.770788
License: Public Domain

GALLAGHER, Associate Judge,
with whom KELLY and MACK, Associate Judges, join, dissenting:
It comes as a surprise to me that the law here involved is not primarily a solicitation *299statute, if only out of constitutional necessity. I should imagine it will come as a surprise to the Bar, too, that this statute1 is not really directed to solicitation for prostitution but, rather, it has some different, esoteric meaning according to the majority opinion. The gist of this offense ordinarily is that a woman solicits a man for prostitution. But unless the prostitute solicits she does not violate the statute.2
As I read the majority opinion, it seems to be stating that, to establish a violation of this statute, it need not necessarily be shown that she solicited the police officer but it is enough if she verbally responds to his approach and subsequent initiative. That is straining quite hard for a violation and I doubt that it would pass constitutional muster.3
I had always thought that if a prostitute is merely standing on a corner she may not be convicted of this statute simply because she is a prostitute. Only if she solicits for prostitution may a conviction follow. I would have thought a construction of the statute was that simple, but now it seems that it is not.
My principal problem with the majority opinion is the court appears to be writing the fundamental element of solicitation out of the statute. The facts in prosecutions for this offense vary in their nuances in a myriad of ways from case to case just as they do in Fourth Amendment cases involving arrests. I see no purpose in dissecting such terms in the statute as “address” and “entice” in a hypertechnical, nonlegalistic manner, thereby ignoring the due process realities. There is no avoiding that, when all is said and done, it is essentially a solicitation statute, and to skirt around that is to me not defensible legally.
For my part, this rather simple case has become much too complicated and on no reasonable basis that I can discern. I dissent.

. D.C.Code 1973, § 22-2701.

. E. g., Williams v. United States, D.C.App., 342 A.2d 367, 369 (1975). See also Harris v. United States, D.C.App., 293 A.2d 851, 853 (1972), rev’d on other grounds, D.C.App., 315 A.2d 569 (1974) (en banc).

. I share dissenting Judge Kelly’s mystification (note 1 of her dissent) as to why the majority took this court en banc on this sufficiency of the evidence question in a routine misdemean- or case. As a result we now seem to have strayed off into a highly questionable construction of the statute by the court.
This is what can happen when the court makes an en banc case out of one which has nothing resembling an en banc issue.