Court Opinion

ID: 9770068
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:37:15.301143+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:12.634341
License: Public Domain

*536Justice SAYLOR,
concurring.
I agree with the majority that the Ethics Act does not require competitive bidding as a component of an “open and public process.” 65 Pa.C.S. § 1103(f). For reasons that differ somewhat from the majority’s rationale, I also agree that evidence of intent is necessary to prove a Section 1103(a) violation and that, accordingly, the Commonwealth Court properly reversed the Commission’s determination that Kistler’s conduct amounted to an “unintentional” conflict of interest.
Initially, to the extent the majority opinion can be read to suggest that any use of one’s office for private gain cannot, by its nature, be unintentional, see Majority Opinion, at 522-23, 22 A.3d at 227, I respectfully disagree. It is possible to use many things unintentionally, and I see no reason why a public official cannot unintentionally use his office in a manner that privately benefits himself or another person within the statute’s prohibition. See 65 Pa.C.S. § 1102 (defining conflict of interest). Here, moreover, there is a reasonable argument that Kistler did, in fact, use his public office to benefit himself. Although Kistler may not have known that he would ultimately be involved in constructing the school facility, he arguably stood to benefit from his action because voting in favor of Roth would naturally tend to encourage Roth to favor Kistler’s company vis-a-vis the transportation facility. Accord Brief for Appellant at 40 (“Kistler ... voted to authorize additional business to Roth, at a time when Kistler had an ongoing business relationship with Roth.”).1 Therefore, I might be *537inclined to find that a violation occurred if Section 1103(a) imposed strict liability.
However, I ultimately concur with the majority’s holding that proof of intent is a necessary prerequisite to the finding of a violation of Section 1103(a). In Commonwealth v. Parmar, 551 Pa. 318, 710 A.2d 1083 (1998), a plurality of this Court indicated that Section 1103(a) should be understood to subsume a mens rea element because any transgression of that provision constitutes a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. See id. at 332, 710 A.2d at 1090 (Opinion in Support of Affirmance) (stating that the severity of this punishment “is a ‘further factor tending to suggest’ that the legislature did not intend to eliminate a mens rea requirement” (quoting Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 618, 114 S.Ct. 1793, 1803, 128 L.Ed.2d 608 (1994))).2
I find this assessment persuasive. As I have previously described, strict-liability crimes represent a comparatively recent innovation in the law, inasmuch as they abandon the *538historical and “intrinsic connection between culpability and condemnation.” Commonwealth v. Samuels, 566 Pa. 109, 115, 778 A.2d 638, 643 (2001) (Saylor, J., concurring); see also Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 256-58, 72 S.Ct. 240, 246-47, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952) (recounting the historical development of strict criminal liability). See generally United States v. Dotterweich, 320 U.S. 277, 284, 64 S.Ct. 134, 138, 88 L.Ed. 48 (1943) (“Hardship there doubtless may be under a statute which ... penalizes [a] transaction though consciousness of wrongdoing be totally wanting.”). As such, they ordinarily arise as so-called “public welfare offenses,” Morissette, 342 U.S. at 255, 72 S.Ct. at 246, set forth in administrative legislation aimed at regulating conduct in the public interest by enforcing compliance with regulatory schemes. See Da-Pra’s Appeal, 425 Pa. 94, 99-100, 227 A.2d 491, 494 (1967) (“These regulatory enactments, largely in the nature of police regulations, are generally referred to as malum prohibitum, and not requiring guilty knowledge as in the malum in se crimes.”). Examples are Vehicle Code summary violations or Liquor Code vicarious offenses pertaining to an employee’s sale of alcohol to minors. See generally Commonwealth v. Jade E., 237 Pa.Super. 140, 145, 346 A.2d 562, 564 (1975). These types of offenses tend to carry relatively minor punishments, see Morissette, 342 U.S. at 256, 72 S.Ct. at 246; Commonwealth v. Ludwig, 583 Pa. 6, 27 n. 1, 874 A.2d 623, 635 n. 1 (2005) (Nigro, J., dissenting); Samuels, 566 Pa. at 117, 778 A.2d at 643 (Saylor, J., concurring) (“The justification for the application of strict liability in this context includes the observation that penalties for regulatory offenses, as well as impact upon reputation, are generally minimal.”), and, indeed, as criminal penalties for absolute liability offenses enlarge, they become increasingly subject to constitutional challenge on due process grounds. See Samuels, 566 Pa. at 117 n. 6, 778 A.2d at 643 n. 6 (Saylor, J., concurring) (quoting Holdridge v. United States, 282 F.2d 302, 310 (8th Cir.1960)); cf. Lambert v. California, 355 U.S. 225, 228-30, 78 S.Ct. 240, 243-44, 2 L.Ed.2d 228 (1957); Commonwealth v. Koczwara, 397 Pa. 575, 586, 155 A.2d 825, 830 (1959) (expressing that imprisonment for vicarious offenses would contravene due process). While *539the law has tolerated the removal of the scienter prerequisite from some discreet elements of serious offenses — such as with regard to the age element where the victim of a sexual crime is under fourteen years old, see 18 Pa.C.S. § 3102; Commonwealth v. Robinson, 497 Pa. 49, 53, 438 A.2d 964, 966 (1981)— strict criminal liability nonetheless remains “disfavored and of questionable validity” in many contexts. Samuels, 566 Pa. at 116, 778 A.2d at 643 (Saylor, J., concurring).
Here, the General Assembly has prescribed that severe criminal penalties may be imposed for any violation of Section 1103(a). It has also classified such a violation as a felony, a classification that makes it particularly unlikely that the Legislature intended Section 1103(a) to define a strict-liability offense. See Morissette, 342 U.S. at 260-61, 72 S.Ct. at 248-49. Hence, I agree with the Parmar plurality that the legislative body should be understood to have intended to require proof of some level of mental culpability in connection with the conflict-of-interest statute. See generally Koczwara, 397 Pa. at 582, 155 A.2d at 828 (developing that whether a culpable mental state is a necessary ingredient of a statutory offense is a matter of statutory interpretation).3 That being the case, it is necessary to consult the mens rea provision of the Crimes Code.
Under Section 302, a person is not guilty of an offense unless he acts intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently, as the law specifies, with respect to each material element. See 18 Pa.C.S. § 302(a). If, however, the law defining the offense does not specify the minimum requisite level of culpability, a person can only be deemed to have committed any element of that offense if he “acts intentionally, knowingly or recklessly with respect thereto.” Id. § 302(c).
The Commission determined that Kistler’s violation was “unintentional” because he “acted based upon his understand*540ing of the legal advice he had received from the CLIU Solicitor.” Commission Report, slip op. at 77. By using “unintentional” in this manner, the Commission does not appear to have been referring to the definition of that term as set forth in Section 302(b) of the Crimes Code.4 Rather, the “unintentional” qualifier utilized by the Commission was evidently meant to signify that Kistler lacked any guilty mental state, as he acted based on the legal advice he received from the CLIU solicitor, who construed the Ethics Act to permit Kistler’s participation in the June 17, 2002, vote. Thus, it cannot reasonably be said that, for example, the Commission would have concluded that Appellant acted knowingly or recklessly, as those terms are defined in the Crimes Code, with respect to the prohibition against conflicts of interest.5
In light of the above, I would hold that, to establish a violation of Section 1103(a), and in accordance with Section 302(c) of the Crimes Code, the Commission must prove that the accused acted intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly with regard to each material element of the conflict-of-interest offense, and that the Commission’s present determination that *541Kistler’s conduct amounted to an “unintentional” conflict, when read in the full context of its report, reflects its belief that his mental state did not rise to any of those levels of scienter. Accordingly, I concur with the majority’s holding that the Commission’s ultimate finding of a Section 1103(a) violation cannot be sustained.
Chief Justice CASTILLE joins this Concurring Opinion.

. In its report, the Commission explained its rationale in more detail, as follows:
[Kistlerfs June 17, 2002, vote in favor of authorizing Roth to pursue the construction of the [school] facility occurred precisely as [Kistler] was actively pursuing the contract to construct the Transportation facility.... We conclude that it is irrelevant that the particular project [Kistler] voted on, specifically the [school] facility, was a different project than the Transportation facility for which he was actively pursuing a contract. Both projects were CLIU projects with Roth or Roth organizations. In [Kistlerfs capacity as a public official, [Kistler] was in a position to vote to award the [school] facility work to Roth. In Roth's capacity as a general contractor for *537the CLIU, Roth was in a position to award a subcontract to [Kistler] to construct the CLIU Transportation facility. Under the circumstances of this case, each of these individuals — [Kistler] as a public official and Roth as a CLIU general contractor — exercised the authority of his respective position in a manner that financially benefited the other.
In re Kistler, No. 04-037, Order No. 1441, slip op. at 76 (Pa. State Ethics Comm’n, June 11, 2007) ("Commission Report”).

. A majority of the Parmar Court concluded that the Act does not impose strict criminal liability. See id. at 334, 710 A.2d at 1091 (Opinion in Support of Reversal) ("I agree that the ... Ethics Act [does] not impose absolute criminal liability____”). The Commission argues that an intent element should not be recognized for purposes of administrative enforcement, as the Commission is unlikely to refer any but the most egregious cases for criminal prosecution pursuant to Section 1107 of the Act. See Brief for Appellant at 36-37 (citing 65 Pa.C.S. § 1107(13), (15)). However, the Commission does not contend that criminal prosecution may not be initiated in any other way, nor does it point to any standards that affirmatively require an administrative mens rea finding as a precondition for such a referral. Further, the Act defines all conflicts of interest to be felonies, see 65 Pa.C.S. § 1109(a), and makes no express distinction in this regard between intentional and unintentional conflicts. I therefore respectfully disagree, not only with the Commission, but with the majority's suggestion that the Parmar analysis is not instructive with regard to the present dispute. See Majority Opinion, at 529 n. 9, 22 A.3d at 231 n. 9.

. As the majority notes, the declared purpose underlying the Act is phrased in terms of prohibiting "efforts” to use public office for private gain. See Majority Opinion, 522-23, 22 A.3d at 227-28 (quoting 65 Pa.C.S. § 1101.1(a)). In my view, and consistent with the majority's analysis, this supports the conclusion that Section 1103(a) was not intended to define an absolute-liability offense.

. See 18 Pa.C.S. § 302(b)(1) ("A person acts intentionally with respect to a material element of an offense when: (i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or a result thereof, it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a result; and (ii) if the element involves the attendant circumstances, he is aware of the existence of such circumstances or he believes or hopes that they exist.”).

. Section 302 defines "knowingly” and "recklessly” as follows:
(2) A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense when: (i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such circumstances exist; and (ii) if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.
(3) A person acts recklessly with respect to a material element of an offense when he consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that, considering the nature and intent of the actor's conduct and the circumstances known to him, its disregard involves a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the actor’s situation.
18 Pa.C.S. § 302(b)(2), (3).