Court Opinion

ID: 9579918
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:59:54.817713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:53.653403
License: Public Domain

BROWN, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The majority opinion is so well packaged that it obscures the fact that it is wrong. The rule of this case is contrary to the common law and Wyoming statutes. Furthermore, it cannot pass constitutional tests.
The majority opinion starts out with the incorrect assumption that Mr. Rios’ actions would not be prosecuted in any state other than Wyoming. Having decided this, the majority completely ignores constitution, statute and common law. The court takes a giant step, missing fundamental principles and reaches a result-oriented decision.
The majority opinion exhaustively cites relevant case law from other jurisdictions, only to conclude that Wyoming should ignore the conclusions reached by every other court cited.
There is no dispute in this case that neither Mr. Rios nor his son, Jesus, were ever within the State of Wyoming. All the relevant facts occurred in New Mexico— the marriage, the divorce, the custody determination, as well as the subsequent custody stipulation entered into by the parties. It is noted that the custody arrangement in May of 1984 was the result of a stipulation between appellant and his former wife. Such arrangement was not set out in the divorce decree. It is also not disputed that at some point Jesus’ mother moved into Wyoming.
Neither is the law in dispute in this case. A court must have jurisdiction over both the offense charged and the person charged. The state did obtain personal jurisdiction over Mr. Rios pursuant to extradition from the State of California. The dispute in this case centers on subject matter jurisdiction.
After acknowledging that Wyoming has recognized the common law principle that a state’s criminal laws are limited to its geographical limits, the majority cites cases *251where such territorial limitations have been extended. An example is that of a person firing a bullet across state lines, and thus killing a person in another state without ever entering that state. The other example is of accessorial acts which cause agents to commit a crime in a state in which the accused never physically appeared. These cases are feeble authority for the majority’s determination, and none of these examples deal with interference with child custody.
The cases cited by the majority that do deal with interference with child custody can be broken into two categories. Those which reach the result the majority reaches, and those which do not. Invariably, those that reach the result reached here by the majority are premised upon a specific criminal statute which authorizes those states to assume jurisdiction based either on conduct or effect. Wyoming has no such statute.
The majority opinion rejects cases wherein it has been ruled that even though the prosecuting state specifically could exercise jurisdiction by statute, it chose not to. An example of this is State v. McCormick, Minn., 273 N.W.2d 624 (1978).
In that ease a Minnesota statute made it a crime to intentionally detain a child outside Minnesota with intent to deny another’s rights under an existing court order. A further Minnesota statute expanded common law jurisdiction as follows:
“A person may be convicted and sentenced under the law of this state if:
“(1) He commits an offense in whole or in part within this state; or
“(2) Being without the state, he causes, aids or abets another to commit a crime within the state; or
“(3) Being without the state, he intentionally causes a result within the state prohibited by the criminal laws of this state.
“It is not a defense that the defendant’s conduct is also a criminal offense under the laws of another state or of the United States or of another country.” Minn.St. 609.025
The Minnesota Supreme Court held, “[w]e do not find in these statutes adequate grounds for disregarding limitations on extra-territorial jurisdictions which have long been recognized as the law of the land.” Id., at p. 625.
That court recognized serious problems in the statute’s potential application where “no contact between the parents, the child and the state of Minnesota exists.” Id., at 628. The hypothetical of Minnesota prosecuting for a felony a California parent wrongfully detaining a child from a parent living in Colorado in violation of a Nebraska court order “points up the difficulty of determining with certainty what interests the statute is designed to protect.” Id., at p. 628.
That court went on to say, as quoted in the majority, “ * * * Defendant constitutionally and historically can only be tried in the district where the crime occurred, a right which experience demonstrates is designed to further the ends of justice.” Id., at p. 628.
The majority opinion effectively circumvents established, constitutionally mandated limitations on the exercise of jurisdiction. The majority ignores the fact that Wyoming has no statute extending subject matter jurisdiction beyond that found in common law, and insists on forging ahead regardless of the fact that more restrained courts have rejected such expansion even when given to them by their own legislators.
This court should heed the language of the Minnesota Supreme Court and accept the “traditional restraint in prosecuting offenses committed outside the borders of a state. * * * ” As that court pointed out, the more effective solution than ignoring centuries of jurisprudence in the area of subject matter jurisdiction, not to mention the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, is “the enactment of federal legislation which avoids constitutional difficulties inherent in the assertion *252of extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction by state courts.” Id., at p. 628.
The majority, it seems, has created some variety of a reverse transitory criminal action; that is, the action' can be brought where the person entitled to custody resides. Under the authority of this case I see no prohibition against a parent entitled to custody moving to Wyoming from any place for the sole purpose of filing a criminal complaint against the parent interfer-ring with custody. This case may create a lot of new work for prosecutors.
I would reverse.