Court Opinion

ID: 9854194
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:02:37.906806+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:57.997726
License: Public Domain

SHUMAKER, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
Under MinmStat. § 609.324, subd. 2 (2002), it is a gross misdemeanor to solicit, accept, hire, or engage in prostitution in a “public place.” Minn.Stat. § 609.321, subd. 12 (2002), defines “public place” to mean a public street, a public sidewalk, a pedestrian skyway, a hotel, a motel, a bar, a restaurant, a public accommodation, or a place of public accommodation.
The undisputed facts show that a plainclothes police officer driving an unmarked car picked up a prostitute, respondent White, in a public area and, as the two drove in the officer’s car, White offered sexual services for money. Upon the officer’s signal to other officers, White was arrested and charged with gross-misdemeanor prostitution.
Granting White’s motion to dismiss the charge for lack of probable cause, the district court ruled that White’s offer to engage in sex for money did not occur in a public place because she and the officer were inside the officer’s car. Concluding that the statute defining “public place” as applied to “public street” is ambiguous, the district court held that the meaning of “public place” is a place in which the public is likely to be present and that the purpose of the statute is “to protect citizens from being unwitting witnesses to the agreement that constitutes the criminal conduct.” Thus, according to the district court, it is the visible act of prostitution at which the statute is aimed. The majority agrees and both hold that the rule of lenity compels the result that they reach.
Preliminarily, as we explained in State v. Collins, the purpose of the rule of lenity “is to ensure that ‘criminal statutes will provide fair warning concerning conduct considered illegal.’ ” 580 N.W.2d 36, 41 (Minn.App.1998) (quoting Liparota v. United States, 471 U.S. 419, 427, 105 S.Ct. 2084, 2089, 85 L.Ed.2d 434 (1985)), review denied (Minn. July 16, 1998). The district court and the majority appear to believe that the rule of lenity requires the narrowest possible reading of a criminal statute *754so as to benefit a defendant. But the rule does not require that. Rather, it requires only that reading which may be said to give “fair warning” of the conduct subject to penalty. Thus, a broad statute, such as we have here, might nevertheless satisfy lenity if it can be reasonably said that the statute, despite its breadth, gives fair warning of the illegal conduct. I believe the statute in question gives that warning and that the majority’s interpretation renders the statute unrealistic in its practical application to a significant societal problem.
The legislature has chosen to make prostitution a crime. Minn.Stat. § 609.324, subd. 3 (2002). If the prostitution occurs in certain public places, the legislature has chosen to make it a more serious crime. Id., subd. 2. The district court and the majority suggest that the legislature’s aim in enhancing the penalty for public prostitution is to protect members of the public from seeing or hearing the transaction of prostitution services. Implicit in this ruling is the notion that the legislature did not intend the more serious penalty for prostitution conducted discreetly and out of the sight and earshot of the law-abiding public. This is the logical extension of the district court’s and majority’s reasoning.
Under this reasoning, the legislature has turned its gross-misdemeanor eyes and ears away from the salaciously dressed prostitute who comes to a public area solely to engage in prostitution, stands provocatively on a street corner, waves at passing cars in hopes of getting some to stop, and then, when one does stop, leans through the car window and whispers the offer of sex for money.
I think the district court and the majority have adopted an ingenuous approach to the intent of the statute. Noting the breadth of the definition of “public place,” I suggest that the legislature did not intend to restrict the enhanced penalty to only overt communication audible enough to be overheard by passersby. Rather, I urge that the purpose of the definition is to discourage prostitutes from coming at all to places in which the public is frequently found. The places listed in the definition are places prostitutes are most likely to be found because those also are places customers are likely to be found. The purpose of the statute is to curtail prostitution and not merely to cause it to become unobtrusive to the public.
The district court’s and majority’s reading of the meaning of “public street” is untenably selective and forces a similar selective reading of the other places defined as public. The district court and the majority have engrafted onto “public street” an exception for a prostitution transaction that takes place in the relatively private interior of a motor vehicle on a public street. To be consistent, the majority must then read exceptions into hotel, motel, bar, and restaurant. Thus, prostitution is subject to the enhanced penalty if it takes place in a hotel or motel, unless it occurs in private rooms out of the view and earshot of the public. And acts of prostitution will incur the enhanced penalty if they happen in bars and restaurants, unless they take place in those quiet corner tables in the backs of the rooms or in booths screened a bit from the public.
The majority’s reading also forces the predicament of how to apply the statute to a public accommodation, such as a taxicab or a public bus, when it is on a public street. Although the statute expressly includes “public accommodation” within its purview, the majority’s approach virtually writes that definition out of the statute if the public accommodation is on a public street.
*755The majority suggests that had the legislature intended to include within the gross-misdemeanor sanction the interiors of motor vehicles on public streets, it could have said so. But considering the breadth of the prohibition — that these acts cannot be done anywhere in streets or motels or bars — it is more likely that the legislature would have provided an exception for places of privacy found within larger public settings, had it intended to exclude certain areas from the reach of the statute.
Finally, I think it reasonable to conclude that the legislature intended the term “street” as both literal and figurative. The hue and cry that we must “rid our streets of crime,” or the thought that we can keep children from getting into trouble by “keeping them off the streets,” surely are not intended to refer only literally to actual streets.
White’s act of prostitution occurred on a public street, albeit within a car. But if the legislature’s goal is to curtail prostitution in public, as I believe it is, then the majority’s decision fails to give effect to that goal, and I would reverse.