Court Opinion

ID: 9613202
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:15:17.952745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:26.762222
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE MORRISON
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion.
Section 45-5-203(l)(c), MCA, is quoted in the majority opinion. That statute prohibits a communication, in the form of a threat to commit any criminal offense, when that communication is designed to cause another to perform, or omit performing, an act. As pointed out in the majority opinion, the same type of statute was involved in Landry v. Daley (N.D. Ill. 1968), 280 F.Supp. 938. In that case the court held the statute to be unconstitutional due to overbreadth. The opinion noted *239that the effect of the statute was to make many forms of political protest punishable as felonies. The court held that threats to commit offenses against the public order were not so substantial that the state could legitimately proscribe the making of such threats.
Our courts have protected against the potential abuses inherent in legislation similar to Montana’s intimidation statute. The majority opinion accurately quotes from Broadrick v. Oklahoma (1973), 413 U.S. 601, 611, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 37 L.Ed.2d 830, 839, wherein the United States Supreme Court said:
“It has long been recognized that the First Amendment needs breathing space and that statutes attempting to restrict or burden the exercise of First Amendment rights must be narrowly drawn and represent a considered legislative judgment that a particular mode of expression has to give way to other compelling needs of society ... Litigants, therefore, are permitted to challenge a statute not because their own rights of free expression are violated, but because of a judicial prediction or assumption that the statute’s very existence may cause others not before the court to refrain from constitutionally protected speech or expression . . .”
The majority attempts to distinguish the Wurtz case from deeply rooted and significant constitutional principles on the basis that Montana’s intimidation statute intends to govern conduct and not speech. The majority opinion states: “The activities which are encompassed by part ‘c’ of the Montana intimidation statute — the commission of any criminal offense — are almost exclusively ‘conduct’.” However, the statute in issue provides: “A person commits the offense of intimidation when, with the purpose to cause another to perform or omit the performance of any act, he communicates to another a threat to. . .(c) commit any criminal offense.”
The clearly stated purpose of the statute is to prohibit communications. The statute clearly impairs verbal expression. The statute has nothing to do with conduct except that some physical gestures may be deemed communication.
The majority opinion states: “The decision to apply felony punishments to seemingly harmless conduct rests with the legislature.” This startling statement shreds the Constitution, *240abdicates judicial responsibility, and creates an Imperial legislature.
Montana’s intimidation statute is, in my judgment, unconstitutional because: (1) First Amendment rights are chilled. (2) The statute makes insubstantial evil punishable as a felony.
I would reverse and remand with directions to dismiss.