Court Opinion

ID: 9699587
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:39:29.224841+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:53.967709
License: Public Domain

REILLY, Chief Judge
(concurring):
As I agree not only with Judge Kern’s conclusion but also his lucid reasons for reversing the trial court, a statement of additional grounds for reversal may seem superfluous. But, as the opinion of the trial court portrays such a distorted picture of the statutes in this jurisdiction dealing with commercialized vice and their enforcement, a few observations to put the matter in proper perspective seem to be in order.
By the device of quoting only a portion of that section of the Code under which appellees were charged — D.C.Code 1973, § 22-2701 — the author of the opinion asserted that “[t]he evidence . . . demonstrates beyond any doubt that the quoted portion ... is enforced exclusively against females.”1 This ignores the fact that this very section of the Code is relied upon by undercover officers in arresting men proposing homosexual conduct to strangers. (See citations of numerous decisions of the court affirming convictions for such solicitations under § 22-2701 collected in n. 4, Riley v. United States, D.C.App., 298 A.2d 228 (1972), a decision rejecting a constitutional challenge to this code provision.)
The trial court’s opinion also fails to state that § 2701 is only one part of Ch. 27, Title 22, of the D.C.Code — a comprehensive chapter entitled “Prostitution-Pandering” containing several other code sections defining other offenses related to the pro*32motion of commercialized vice, e. g., running houses of prostitution, § 22-2712;2 inducing females to reside in such houses, § 22-2705; procuring, § 22-2707, etc. The reported cases in the annotated code reveal that most of the offenders convicted under these sections have been males, and that in the enforcement of the procuring statute, arrests are frequently brought about by the use of plainclothes officers accosted by pimps who for a stated sum offer to arrange the services of a prostitute.3
In short, the implication that the police discriminatorily enforce the vice statutes only against women is misleading; and the trial judge’s denunciation of the police force for conforming to “our historical double standard” and analogizing the situation to a hypothetical policy of enforcing criminal statutes against blacks and not against whites must be deemed an unjudi-cial exercise of infla'mmatory rhetoric.
If the applicable District statutes or their enforcement were directed only at female vendors of illicit sexual activity, as may be the situation in some states — State v. Devall, 302 So.2d 909 (La.1974) 4 — a constitutional question of some substance might be present. The text of the lower court’s opinion reveals, however, that its underlying notion is that the buyers as well as the sellers of illicit sexual services should be equally punished, and that while the statute prohibits only solicitation defined as “inviting, enticing, or persuading” —the police department could round up substantial numbers of prospective customers of prostitutes if it saw fit to put on the streets a squad of police — presumably women disguised as harlots — to provoke such invitations.5
According to the police official who testified, however, his department did adopt such methods in 1970 but discontinued the scheme because it did not result in convictions. Despite this explanation, the trial court without any record support whatever, saw fit to disparage this testimony and to mandate its own personal view of what police tactics might be effective.
Plainly, it is outside the province of a trial court to direct a police department, whose manpower is already severely strained in coping with the increase in such major felonies as murder, robbery, rape, and other assaults, how best to utilize its *33personnel in the enforcement of a relatively minor misdemeanor statute. As this court is satisfied that the record does not support any finding of sexual discrimination, I concur in the judgment of reversal.
NEBEKER, J., concurs in the opinion of KERN, T., and in the concurring opinion of REILLY, C. J.

. The words omitted, following immediately after the phrase “for the purpose of prostitution”, are: “or for any other immoral or lewd purpose.” It is under this latter disjunctive phrase that males soliciting passersby to engage in sodomy are generally charged —possibly because of a widely held assumption by prosecutors that the term prostitution refers to acts of venal intercourse by a certain class of women, although the dictionary shows that the word has acquired a broader meaning. See Webster’s International Dictionary, 2nd Ed. (Unabridged).
Conceivably, however, the police may regard the term as encompassing only heterosexual acts, for the supervising police officer who testified recognized that there are such persons as “male prostitutes” and that they frequently advertise their services in underground pornographic publications. He testified that the reason no arrests had been made of such persons was that neither he nor his staff of investigators had found any Washington addresses for male prostitutes listed in these periodicals. The officer’s concept of the term “male prostitute” seems more limited than common usage, for men offering to sell their services for homosexual gratification are often called male prostitutes, and, as noted in the body of my concurring opinion, policemen use the same methods to apprehend these prostitutes when engaged in public solicitation that they employ against female streetwalkers.

. This court has held that another section of the Code, § 22-2722, prohibiting the keeping of bawdy houses, applies to the male proprietor of a house of homosexual assignation. Harris v. United States, D.C.App., 293 A.2d 851 (1972), vacated en banc for other reasons, 315 A.2d 569 (1974).

. Langley v. United States, D.C.App., 264 A. 2d 503 (1970) ; Walker v. United States, D.C.App., 248 A.2d 187 (1968) ; Sellers v. United States, D.C.Mun.App., 131 A.2d 300 (1957).

. In this case, a majority of the Louisiana Supreme Court — two justices dissenting — upheld the constitutionality of a state statute defining prostitution as the “ . . . practice by a female of' indiscriminate sexual intercourse with males for compensation” despite “equal protection” arguments.

. Subsequent to this implied suggestion, the police, even though an appeal was promptly noted, did try such an experiment, thereby, according to the press, creating the absurd spectacle of female police officers dressed and made-up in the accoutrements of the profession, congregating on the same street corners which prostitutes notoriously frequent, hailing male motorists, and elbowing the real professionals in sidling up to possible patrons. Obviously any persons arrested under such circumstances might well have claimed an arguable entrapment defense.
In his brief, the United States Attorney complains that after issuing his opinion in this case, the trial judge took advantage of his then current assignment in calendar control to dismiss summarily some 60 other in-formations on the strength of his own constitutional views instead of referring them to other judges or even awaiting the filings of written motions to dismiss in compliance with Super.Ct.Crim.R. 47-1. Moreover, instead of dismissing new cases solely on the authority of a trial court decision challenged on appeal, the better practice is to continue such matters.
Apparently this roadblock to law enforcement stirred the police department, against its better judgment, to resort for a few days to methods already proved impracticable.