Court Opinion

ID: 9634304
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:08:31.022167+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:18.149627
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
concurring.
The majority writes at length regarding a point which is not in dispute: the statute in question has a rational relationship to a valid state objective. The requirements of due process have clearly been met to the extent that the legislature has acted in an area properly the subject of its police power, and has not done so arbitrarily. The question presented for our determination is whether the legislature has acted “with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, —, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 1858, 75 L.Ed.2d 903, 909 (1983). The statute clearly does not “encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” A person driving a vehicle either has blood alcohol greater than .10% or he does not. There is no room for discretionary determinations by enforcement officers whether the conduct violates the statute or not. If the statute is to be found impermissibly vague, then, it must be because it fails to define the offense “with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited.”
Appellee’s argument in support of such a finding differs from the ordinary “vagueness” argument in that it focuses only on the individual’s “inability” to determine when his conduct constitutes a violation, without considering whether the language of the statute is the cause of that “inability.” Careful analysis reveals that the Appellee’s argument is not that the statute is vague, but that he as a person of ordinary intelligence cannot readily determine with certainty whether his conduct conforms to the requirements of the statute. This argument, I think, goes more to the reasonableness of the legislative judgment than to whether fair notice has been provided as required by due process. Clear*264ly, if the legislature were to define as illegal, conduct which was impossible to determine as being within the definition, then that definition would fail as being irrational. A mere showing of difficulty in determining whether conduct is within the definition does not suffice to meet the heavy burden of persuasion upon one who challenges the constitutionality of an Act of the General Assembly, or rebut the strong presumption of constitutionality which every statute carries.1 See Snider v. Thornburgh, 496 Pa. 159, 166, 436 A.2d 593, 596 (1981). Thus although I do not adopt the Majority’s reasoning, I fully concur in the determination that the statute does not violate due process for vagueness or any other reason.
The Appellee’s alternative argument, not addressed by the lower court, that the statute violates due process because it imposes strict criminal liability, is properly treated by the Majority. Both this Court and the United States Supreme Court have recognized that “it is doubtless competent for the [government] to create strict criminal liabilities by defining criminal offenses without any element of scienter____” Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147, 150, 80 S.Ct. 215, 217, 4 L.Ed.2d 205 (1959). In Holdridge v. United States, 282 F.2d 302, 310 (8th Cir.1960), Judge, now Justice Blackmun stated the situations in which strict liability may be imposed.
“... where it seems to involve what is basically a matter of policy, where the standard imposed is, under the circumstances, reasonable and adherence thereto properly expected of a person, where the penalty is relatively small, where conviction does not gravely besmirch, where the statutory crime is not one taken over from the common law, and where [legislative] purpose is supporting, *265the statute can be construed as one not requiring criminal intent.”
For the foregoing reasons, I concur in the result reached by the Majority.

. By way of analogy, I note that in the case of statutory rape, a person may be convicted upon a showing of intercourse with another under the age of 14. The fact that the victim is under 14 is extremely difficult to determine with certainty, but this court has held that exercising its police power, "the legislature rationally may require that one eighteen years of age or older who engages in sexual intercourse with a child below fourteen years of age does so at his own peril." Commonwealth v. Robinson, 497 Pa. 49, 54, 438 A.2d 964, 966 (1981).