Court Opinion

ID: 9528355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:40:16.564522+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:46.509313
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(dissenting): I dissent. The prevailing opinion overlooks the rule that criminal statutes should be interpreted strictly. See State v. Bowser, 158 Kan. 12, 145 P. 2d 135, where we held:
“Courts are not at liberty to extend by intendment the provisions of statutes creating and defining crimes.”
See, also, State v. Waite, 156 Kan. 143, 131 P. 2d 708, where we held:
“A rule of strict construction is to be applied to criminal statutes, and courts should not extend them to embrace acts or conduct not clearly included within the prohibitions of the statute.”
The list could be extended indefinitely but no rule is much better known. The so-called state welfare statutes, chapter 327 of the Laws of 1937, now G. S. 1949, 39-701 tó 39-721, has some twenty-one sections. Resides that, pursuant to the rule-making power conferred on the state board by the statute, there are voluminous rules of the state board. It is significant that nowhere either in the statute or in these rules is there a provision requiring the recipient of aid from the social welfare, board to disclose when his condition has changed with reference to income. As a matter of fact, just the opposite is implied by the provision, as noted in the prevailing opinion for the county agency making periodical reviews of the eligibility of a recipient of assistance at no less intervals than six months and that a review shall be made whenever it is known to the agency that circumstances have changed.
If the legislature or the rule-making power had intended that a failure to disclose any change should be a crime, the legislature *112would have inserted it in the statute or the rule-making power would have inserted it in one of their rules. Placing the most drastic construction upon the words of section 8a, the provision is that the general eligibility shall depend upon the income not being sufficient income to provide a reasonable subsistence compatible with decency and health. There actually is no provision in the statute anywhere providing the question of eligibility shall depend upon a certain fixed income. The prevailing opinion seems to hold that a failure to disclose an increased income is actually a fraudulent device under G. S. 1949, 39-720. As a matter of fact, there could very well be a difference of opinion as to whether the means the client had at the time he complied with section 8a and was put on the relief rolls and what he later earned in addition was more than enough to provide him with a subsistence compatible with decency and health. To brand such a difference of opinion as a criminal fraud is to my mind to overlook the rule quoted earlier in this dissenting opinion as to the strict construction to be given criminal statutes.