Court Opinion

ID: 9760306
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:47:32.298639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:10.732982
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
dissenting.
I not only believe the majority misconstrues the Criminal Impersonation statute and reaches the wrong result in this case; but by slicing, dicing, parsing, distinguishing, and generally over-analyzing (over the course of some thirty paragraphs) one short and relatively self-explanatory phrase, the majority manages to exclude from the statutory proscription conduct lying at its very heart. Because I consider the defendant's deliberate misrepresentation of the single most unique and important piece of identifying data for credit-transaction purposes to be precisely the kind of conduct meant to be proscribed as criminal by this statute, I respectfully dissent.
As relevant here the statute prohibits using a false or fictitious identity or capacity for the purpose of unlawfully gaining a benefit or defrauding someone else.1 A social security number is for many purposes the single most effective and relied-upon means of distinguishing one person from another. Unlike a name, date of birth, physical de-seription, or other means of identification, there is a one-to-one correspondence between a social security number and a specific person. In addition to other kinds of personal and financial history, the credit history of any particular individual is typically available only through his social security number. By claiming another person's social security number in a credit transaction, as the defendant did in this case, a person necessarily identifies himself as the person with the credit history associated with that number. Even if he provides a number that has never yet been assigned to anyone, he nevertheless identifies himself as a fictitious person with an unblemished credit history. In either case, he falsely identifies himself for the specific purpose of fraudulently entitling himself to credit, or worse, to unpaid-for property on the basis of that credit.
Contrary to the assertions of the majority, I do not believe its interpretation is in any way limited, or even guided, by our prior precedents. We have never yet attempted to comprehensively define the terms "identity" or "capacity" or suggest in any way that they are used in this statute as mutually exclusive alternatives. Quite the contrary, we have expressly characterized misrepresentation as the husband of another and receiving money "in that capacity" as "the assumed false or fictitious identity which enabled appellant to wrongfully obtain the funds which were not his." People v. Gonzales, 188 Colo. 272, 276, 534 P.2d 626, 628 (1975) (emphasis added). Capacity is clearly one of a person's identifying characteristics and by expressly including that term along with "identity," the statute merely indicates the breadth it intends for the term "identity."
By the same token, when we held in Alvarado v. People, 132 P.3d 1205, 1208 (Colo.2006), that the defendant assumed a false *932identity by giving a false name and date of birth, and thereby held himself out to be another person, we did not purport to comprehensively define the phrase "false or fictitious identity," and we certainly never suggested that assuming a false identity is accomplished only by giving of a false name. Apart from having no precedential value for this court, the court of appeals' demonstration in People v. Bauer, 80 P.3d 896, 897-98 (Colo.App.20083), that the defendant in that case assumed a false "capacity," according to one of the commonly-accepted definitions of the term, similarly never suggested that the statutory term should be limited to that aspect of the definition, much less that it should be further restricted to "legal" capacity, as the majority does today.
Although it also has no precedential value for this court, a different panel of the court of appeals found, almost twenty years ago, that a social security number on a loan application was but one of a number of requested items of identification, and in light of other truthful disclosures, that giving a false social security number did not amount to assuming a false identity. See People v. Jones, 841 P.2d 372, 374 (Colo.App.1992). Because the People did not seek a writ of certiorari in that case, this court was not given the opportunity to review that holding directly. Whether or not it might be factually distinguishable from the case before us today, I believe Jones was wrongly decided, and unlike the majority, I would expressly overrule it. Where the nature of a transaction is such that a false social security number is not merely incidental but is rather the single piece of identifying data upon which the fraud in question depends, it cannot be assessed as merely "one of many pieces of identifying information." Maj. op. at 925. For purposes of the fraudulent transaction at issue, it is clearly the assumption of a false or fictitious identity.
Criminal Impersonation is a relatively minor, inchoate offense. Using personal identifying information like a social security number without authority to obtain credit is now treated much more expressly and punished much more severely. See § 18-5-902, C.R.S. (2010) (Identity Theft). Although the majority opinion may therefore have little practical effect in future cases, I object to its approach of so narrowly parsing the individual terms chosen by the legislature that the type of conduct at which its proscription is most directly aimed ultimately falls through the cracks and remains unregulated. I therefore respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Justice RICE and Justice EID join in this dissent.

. Although the majority's rationale for reversal appears to rest entirely on its understanding of the phrase, "assumes a false or fictitious identity or capacity," which appears in subsection 113(1) of the statute, it nevertheless pointedly asserts that the defendant was not convicted according to the "injure or defraud" language in subsection 113(1)(e). Maj. op. at 925 n. 1 & 928. In a single short phrase, subsection (1)(e) prohibits falsifying one's identity or capacity with the intent to either unlawfully gain a benefit or defraud another, and the defendant was clearly charged with and convicted of violating section 18-5-113(1)(e). Unless the majority implies that falsifying a loan application does not harm the lender simultaneously with benefiting the borrower, and that the words "identity or capacity" somehow take on one meaning when the defendant's intent is to benefit himself and another when his intent is to cause loss, I fail to appreciate the significance of this disclaimer.