Court Opinion

ID: 9782112
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 17:59:28.661743+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:48.116135
License: Public Domain

Parraguirre, J.,
dissenting:
The majority concludes that NRS 202.360(1)(b) is unconstitutionally vague because it fails to define the term “fugitive from justice.” I disagree.
Normally, we presume that a statute is constitutionally valid and we require a party contending otherwise to “make a clear showing of invalidity” before striking a statute down.1 Moreover, when a party argues that a statute is unconstitutionally vague, we demand that he or she demonstrate that (1) the statute “fails to provide notice sufficient to enable persons of ordinary intelligence to under*298stand what conduct is prohibited” and (2) the statute “lacks specific standards, thereby encouraging, authorizing, or even failing to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”2
Here, the majority concludes that appellant Albert Gallegos has met his burden of demonstrating that NRS 202.360(1)(b) provides insufficient notice of prohibited conduct and lacks specific standards. By contrast, I conclude that Gallegos has not met this burden.
The term “fugitive from justice” has a well-settled and ordinarily understood meaning.3 In the past, this court has defined the term “fugitive from justice” as a person who has (1) committed a crime in another state, (2) been charged in that state with the commission of such crime, and (3) fled from justice and is within this state.4 Our definition fits within the meaning supplied by Webster’s New International Dictionary, which identifies a “fugitive from justice” as “[o]ne who, having committed, or being accused of, a crime in one jurisdiction, flees to avoid punishment.”5 In light of these compatible, common definitions, Gallegos has failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that the term “fugitive from justice” fails to provide sufficient notice of prohibited conduct.
Because the term “fugitive from justice” has a well-settled meaning in Nevada and does not appear to promote arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement, I dissent from the majority’s conclusion that NRS 202.360(1)(b) is unconstitutionally vague.

 Silvar v. Dist. Ct., 122 Nev. 289, 292, 129 P.3d 682, 684 (2006).

 Id. at 293, 129 P.3d at 685.

 See Woofter v. O’Donnell, 91 Nev. 756, 762, 542 P.2d 1396, 1400 (1975) (noting that “[t]he test of granting sufficient warning as to proscribed conduct will be met if there are well settled and ordinarily understood meanings for the words employed when viewed in the context of the entire statutory provision”).

 Ex parte Lorraine, 16 Nev. 63, 63 (1881); Castriotta v. State, 111 Nev. 67, 69 n.2, 888 P.2d 927, 929 n.2 (1995). The fact that one obscure Nevada case concluded, in a different context, “that the mode or manner of a person’s departure from the . . . state generally does not affect his status as a fugitive from justice,” does not, in my view, so muddy the definition of the term “fugitive from justice” as to render it unconstitutionally vague. Robinson v. Leypoldt, 74 Nev. 58, 61-62, 322 P.2d 304, 306 (1958).

 Webster’s New International Dictionary 1016 (2d ed. 1961); cf. Black’s Law Dictionary 694-95 (8th ed. 2004) (defining a “fugitive” as “[a] criminal suspect or a witness in a criminal case who flees, evades, or escapes arrest, prosecution, imprisonment, service of process, or the giving of testimony, esp. by fleeing the jurisdiction or by hiding;” and noting that in this sense the word “fugitive” may also be termed “fugitive from justice”).