Court Opinion

ID: 9587517
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:23:12.641155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:14.098558
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Chief Justice,
dissenting:
This case involves a facial constitutional attack on Pocatello City Ordinance § 9.16.070, the loitering and prowling ordinance. This ordinance is modeled after the Model Penal Code, MPC § 250.6.
While the record does not reflect any written or oral motion to dismiss the complaint, nevertheless the magistrate court issued a memorandum decision on September 30,1987, dismissing the complaint after considering defendant’s challenge that the ordinance was facially unconstitutional. The magistrate court concluded “that Pocatello City Ordinance § 9.16.070 is facially unconstitutional as violating the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and as a denial of due process of law by being vague and overbroad.” The district court, in a written memorandum decision, affirmed the holding of the trial court. The court concluded that the Pocatello loitering and prowling ordinance is facially unconstitutional under the fourth, fifth and fourteenth amendments to the United *592States Constitution, and under Art. 1, § 17, of the Idaho Constitution.
The sole issue on appeal is whether Pocatello City Ordinance § 9.16.070 is facially unconstitutional, i.e., whether it is “invalid in toto and therefore incapable of any valid application.” Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 474, 94 S.Ct. 1209, 1223, 39 L.Ed.2d 505, 523 (1974); State v. Newman, 108 Idaho 5, 11, n. 7, 696 P.2d 856, 862, n. 7 (1985).
I
The defendant’s attack on the ordinance was apparently made by a motion to dismiss; however, the record does not disclose such a motion. There is no statement in the record on appeal of the factual circumstances which resulted in the charges being filed against the defendant Bitt. However, both the magistrate’s opinion and the opinion of the district court on appeal recite a factual scenario which is repeated in the briefs on appeal. The majority has recited those facts briefly, even though the defendant’s facial attack and the magistrate’s and district court’s decisions are based upon a finding that the ordinance is unconstitutional under any and all factual circumstances, rather than a finding that the ordinance was unconstitutional as applied to the facts of this particular case.
While the facts were recited as they appear in the briefs submitted to us and in the decisions of the magistrate and district courts, this Court is not asked to rule upon the question of the application of the loitering and prowling statute to those particular facts. Rather, at issue is the ruling of the courts below that the ordinance is facially unconstitutional in all of its applications. A facial unconstitutional determination requires an analysis of whether there is any factual setting under which the application of the statute would be constitutional.6 Thus, for purposes of that facial constitutional analysis, this court should consider any factual variant under which the statute might be applied which might compose a constitutional application. Two possible factual variants illustrate the broadness of the consideration which must be given to such a facial constitutional attack on a statute.
First, I believe the Court must consider whether the ordinance would be facially unconstitutional if the defendant Bitt, rather than being apprehended outside of the convenience store pounding on the door, was found after hours inside the store and when discovered attempted to hide, and when questioned concerning his presence inside the closed convenience store merely identified himself and then attempted to leave without responding further or explaining his presence in the closed store. Under such circumstances, would application of the loitering and prowling ordinance to the defendant’s conduct be unconstitutional?
A second factual variant would arise if the defendant Bitt, dressed in dark clothing and wearing a ski mask, was discovered in the middle of the night crouching behind bushes beneath the open bedroom window of a 25-year-old woman. If when ap*593proached by an officer, he attempted to hide himself, and when questioned identified himself but attempted to leave, would the application of the loitering and prowling ordinance under those circumstances be unconstitutional?
Those two of serveral possible alternative factual scenarios are sufficient to point out the error in the Court’s acceptance of the facial unconstitutionality claim raised by the defendant Bitt in this case.
II
First is the claim that Pocatello City Ordinance § 9.16.0707 facially violates the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. 1, § 17, of the Idaho Constitution, in all circumstances.
Bitt asserts and the majority has confirmed that the Pocatello ordinance is unconstitutional on its face under the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983), because it authorizes an arrest based on mere suspicion, thereby circumventing the fourth amendment requirement that arrests are only lawful upon a showing of probable cause. Bitt asserts, and the majority concurs with him, that the Pocatello ordinance criminalizes behavior which would otherwise give rise to a mere suspicion of criminal activity. The magistrate court agreed and declared the ordinance “authorizes the arrest, prosecution and conviction and punishment of people suspected of committing another crime, without having probable cause to believe that the suspected crime is committed.” However, the defendant Bitt’s claim, and both the magistrate’s analysis and the majority’s concurrence, misperceive the conduct which constitutes the crime under the ordinance. The first paragraph of § 9.16.070 provides, “It is unlawful for any person to loiter or prowl in a place at a time or in a manner not usual for law abiding individuals under circumstances that warrant alarm for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.” The ordinance does not authorize the “conviction and punishment of people suspected of committing another crime ...” as the magistrate held. Rather, the ordinance makes it a crime to “loiter or prowl in a place at a time or in a manner not usual for law abiding individuals under circumstances that warrant alarm for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.” It is the “loitering or prowling” which constitutes the crime, not the officer’s reasonable suspicion that another crime has been or is about to be committed. Accordingly, assuming that an ordinance defining a crime can be facially unconstitutional under the fourth amendment because it defines a criminal act which is based upon a mere suspicion of criminal activity,8 the ordinance here does not criminalize “mere suspicion of criminal activity”; rather, it makes criminal loitering or prowling.
*594Because Bitt’s claim is that the ordinance violates the fourth amendment under every application, I am not here concerned with whether or not the officer who arrested Bitt in this particular case had probable cause rather than merely a reasonable suspicion that the defendant Bitt had committed the crime of loitering and prowling in violation of Pocatello City Ordinance § 9.16.070. Rather, I am concerned with the question of whether, if the defendant Bitt were convicted of the crime of loitering and prowling in violation of § 9.16.070 and was imprisoned rather than merely fined, would that conviction and imprisonment constitute a violation of the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution under any factual scenario which could be considered under the statute. This Court was cited to no decision of the United States Supreme Court which has so held. The reason why there appears to be no decision of the United States Supreme Court holding that the definition of a crime in a statute can, by itself, violate the fourth amendment was recognized by Justice Brennan in his special concurring opinion in Kolender in which he states, “The question thus has always been whether particular conduct by the police violated the Fourth Amendment, and we have not had to reach the question whether state law purporting to authorize such conduct also offended the Constitution.” 461 U.S. at 363, n. 1, 103 S.Ct. at 1861, n. 1. It is possible that a procedural statute which authorized the seizure of a person on less than probable cause could be held defective as applied under the fourth amendment. While a statute or ordinance which vaguely defines a crime has been held to be unconstitutional under the fifth amendment due process clause, as was the case in Kolender, neither the United States Supreme Court, nor any federal court to our knowledge, has ever held that a statute or ordinance which vaguely described a crime facially violates the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution because it authorizes the seizure of a criminal defendant without probable cause. Furthermore, such a facial attack, which is based upon a claim that the statute is unconstitutional in all and any application, would have to assume that the penalty for such a conviction would be imprisonment, rather than- merely a fine. If there were no imprisonment, but merely a fine, there would be no seizure, and thus no fourth amendment issue would be raised. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975).
Accordingly, this Court should agree with the only other court to directly address this issue, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has held that a statute similar to Pocatello City Ordinance § 9.16.070 was not facially unconstitutional under the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution. City of Milwaukee v. Nelson, 149 Wis.2d 434, 439 N.W.2d 562 (1989); State v. Wilks, 117 Wis.2d 495, 345 N.W.2d 498 (1984), aff'd on other grounds, 121 Wis.2d 93, 358 N.W.2d 273 (1984). This Court should reject Bitt’s fourth amendment and Art. 1, § 17, claims.9
Ill
Appellant’s main argument, and the primary basis for the magistrate’s and the district court’s holding below, is that Pocatello City Ordinance § 9.16.070 violates the due process clause of the fifth and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution. Appellant, the courts below and the majority opinion of this Court have based their claim of facial unconstitutionality upon the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Kolender v. Lawson, supra.
The constitutionally infirm statute10 in Kolender provided:
Every person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor: ... (e) Who loiters or wanders upon the streets or from place to place without apparent reason *595or business and who refuses to identify himself and to account for his presence when requested by any peace officer so to do, if the surrounding circumstances are such as to indicate to a reasonable man that the public safety demands such identification.
(Emphasis added.) The California courts had held that their loitering statute contained two elements, (1) loitering or wandering upon the streets or from place to place, and (2) refusal to identify oneself. People v. Soloman, 33 Cal.App.3d 429, 108 Cal.Rptr. 867 (1973). The California courts had construed the ordinance to require the suspect to provide a “credible and reliable” identification. The United States Supreme Court in Kolender concluded that the statute as construed by the California Court of Appeal “is unconstitutionally vague within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by failing to clarify what is contemplated by the requirement that a suspect provide a ‘credible and reliable’ identification.” 461 U.S. at 353, 103 S.Ct. at 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d at 903. The court in Kolender enunciated the void-for-vagueness test as follows:
As generally stated, the void-for-vagueness doctrine requires that a penal statute define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc.
461 U.S. at 357, 103 S.Ct. at 1858.
However, the Pocatello ordinance differs from the California statute in several respects. Foremost, unlike the California statute, the Pocatello ordinance does not make the defendant’s refusal to identify himself an element of the offense. For a conviction under the ordinance, the prosecutor must prove that the defendant was loitering or prowling “in a place at a time or in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals under circumstances that warrant alarm for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.” The “circumstances that warrant alarm” may include refusal to identify, but they may also include (1) taking flight upon the appearance of a peace officer, or (2) manifestly endeavoring to conceal oneself or any object. The peace officer, under the ordinance, must provide the actor with an opportunity to dispel alarm, or there can be no conviction. However, the actor’s failure to provide identification that was “credible and reliable,” is not an element of the offense, and no burden is placed on the defendant to provide such “credible and reliable” identification. Merely proffering of an opportunity to dispel alarm does not in itself violate one’s right to due process, nor does it abrogate the right against self-incrimination. Rather, it merely permits the officer to make a threshold inquiry to evaluate the situation and to determine whether the “circumstances warrant alarm for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.” This feature of the statute dispels the fatal constitutional flaw of this ordinance suggested by the majority by providing the guidelines necessary to determine whether an officer had made the correct approach to the enforcement of the statute. The identification procedure in the loitering and prowling ordinance is no different than in a suspected burglary. For example, if the defendant Bitt had been found inside the closed convenience store, rather than outside pounding on the door, the officer would have been entitled to ask him to identify himself so that the officer could determine whether he was the owner, or a burglar. If a suspect under those circumstances could identify himself and establish a legitimate reason for being there, a burglary arrest would, of course, be prevented. If the suspect could not identify himself or reasonably explain his presence, likely he would be arrested for burglary. The mere fact that the ordinance requires an officer to give a suspected person the opportunity to dispel alarm before a person can be convicted under the ordinance does not put a requirement on the suspect to “provide a ‘credible or reliable’ identification,” as was the case in Kolender, nor does it make the defendant’s refusal an element of the crime as was the situation *596with the California statute involved in Kolender.
Since Kolender, several jurisdictions have interpreted their similar MPC-based loitering and prowling statutes in this manner and have upheld their constitutionality on a void for a facial vagueness/due process analysis. See e.g., City of Milwaukee v. Nelson, 149 Wis.2d 434, 439 N.W.2d 562 (1989), Watts v. State, 463 So.2d 205 (Fla. 1985), Bell v. State, 313 S.E.2d 678 (Ga. 1984), contra, Fields v. City of Omaha, 810 F.2d 830 (8th Cir.1987). I would join the Supreme Courts of Wisconsin, Florida and Georgia in upholding the constitutionality of this MPC-based ordinance. The ordinance defines the crime “with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” 461 U.S. at 357, 103 S.Ct. at 1858.
The ordinance found unconstitutional in Kolender can be distinguished on another basis. The Kolender statute outlawed loitering or wandering “upon the streets or from place to place____” The Kolender court found that the statute “implicate[d] consideration of the constitutional right to freedom of movement.” 461 U.S. at 358, 103 S.Ct. at 1859. The Pocatello ordinance, however, is not directed at wandering “upon the streets or from place to place,” but from the sketchy facts in this case was directed toward prowling on private property. The Pocatello ordinance is capable of a constitutionally valid application where a person is charged with “prowl[ing] in a place at a time or in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals under circumstances that warrant alarm for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.” The example of the darkly-clothed and masked man crouching in the bushes outside the bedroom window of a single woman’s apartment in the middle of the night surely would constitute a constitutional application of the ordinance’s prohibition against “loiterpng] or prowl[ing] in a place at a time or in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals under circumstances that warrant alarm for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.” Accordingly, the ordinance is not unconstitutional in every application under either the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution or the due process clauses of the fifth and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution, or under Art. 1, § 17, of the Idaho Constitution.
I would reverse the judgments of the magistrate and district courts with directions to reinstate the complaint.

. In Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 358, n. 8, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 1859, n. 8, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983), in dicta responding to a dissent by Justice White the footnote refers to Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379, 394-401, 99 S.Ct. 675, 685-688, 58 L.Ed.2d 596 (1979) and Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 59 S.Ct. 618, 83 L.Ed. 888 (1939), in which Justice White correctly characterizes their "upshot":
Whether ... a statute purports to regulate constitutionally protected conduct, it should not be held unconstitutionally vague on its face unless it is vague in all of its possible applications... If any fool would know that a particular category of conduct would be within the reach of the statute, if there is an unmistakable core that a reasonable person would know is forbidden by the law, the enactment is not unconstitutional on its face and should not be vulnerable to a facial attack in a declaratory judgment action such as is involved in this case.
(Emphasis added) The language contained in the footnote does not overrule Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982) or Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 94 S.Ct. 2547, 41 L.Ed.2d 439 (1974). If we continue to follow Newman and consider facial attacks on a criminal statute’s validity as set forth in a motion to dismiss, then we should continue to assess the strength of this facial attack as if it were taking place in a declaratory judgment proceeding.

. For a copy of Pocatello City Ordinance § 9.16.070 Loitering and Prowling see p. 8 of the majority opinion.

. Although the appellant asserts that Pocatello City Ordinance § 9.16.070 is facially unconstitutional under the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution, appellant cites no decision of the United States Supreme Court which has held a statute which defines a crime to violate the fourth amendment. Such a claim was made in Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983), and the United States Supreme Court expressly declined to so hold. In his special concurring opinion in Kolender, Justice Brennan argues that the California statute involved in Kolender would, in his opinion, violate the fourth amendment. However, he cites no authority for the proposition that an ordinance, defining a crime, can facially violate the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution, and acknowledges that "[w]e have not in recent years found a state statute invalid directly under the Fourth Amendment____" 461 U.S. at 363, n. 1, 103 S.Ct. at 1861, n. 1. While he cites to Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968), and its holding that “the government may not ‘authorize police conduct which trenches upon Fourth Amendment rights, id., he recognizes that claims of fourth amendment violations are directed toward police conduct, rather than the definition of a crime as set out in the statute. Thus, Justice Brennan states, ‘The question thus has always been whether particular conduct by the police violated the Fourth Amendment, and we have not had to reach the question whether state law purporting to authorize such conduct also offended the Constitution." Id.

. In State v. Peterson, 81 Idaho 233, 236, 340 P.2d 444, 446 (1959), we wrote: "Our constitutional provisions relating to searches and seizures and due process of law are substantially the same as those of the United States Constitution.”

. California Penal Code Ann. (West 1970) § 647(e).