Court Opinion

ID: 9763609
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:50:37.546952+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:46.660876
License: Public Domain

WELLIVER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I believe that the circuit judges, who prior to the principal opinion have held the Adult Abuse Act to be unconstitutional, are in a far better position to perceive the invasions of personal rights flowing from the application of this act than we who sit in these halls.
When we permit child custody, support and maintenance provisions, usually found in Chapter 452, to be hidden behind the newly created term which we now denominate as “Adult Abuse”, when we permit the orders contemplated by the act to be entered without notice or hearing, and, when we permit circuit judges to define the elements of crime on a case by case basis without notice or hearing, then we by judicial interpretation have rendered a nullity: (1) the long established rule of statutory construction that penal statutes must be strictly construed against the state, (2) the constituional prohibition, Mo.Const. art. Ill, § 23, that “[n]o bill shall contain more than one subject which shall be clearly expressed in its title...and (3) due process of law, U.S.Const.Amend. XIV, Mo.Const. art. I, § 10.
The Adult Abuse Act exhibits the fullest potential for creating nine new evils for every evil it would seek by its terms to correct.