Court Opinion

ID: 9756605
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:39:53.598492+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:26.493748
License: Public Domain

RONNIE L. WHITE, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The words “reasonable cause to suspect,” as used in section 210.115, are so broad, so undefined, and so vague, that no mandated reporter could discern a difference between an accidental childhood injury and an injury inflicted as a result of child abuse that requires reporting. Under the facts of this case, the statute failed to provide Ms. Brown sufficient warning as to the proscribed conduct and, lacking an explicit standard, applying the statute to Ms. Brown is both arbitrary and discriminatory.
A criminal statute is vague when it fails to give notice to potential offenders of the prohibited conduct, and notice is inadequate when the terms of the statute are so unclear that people of common intelligence must guess at their meaning.1 A statute is also vague if it lacks explicit standards necessary to avoid arbitrary and discriminatory application by the state.2 The Missouri and United States Constitutions are intolerant of vagueness when applying criminal statutes because of the relative importance of fair notice and fair enforcement.3 The possibility of criminal sanctions raises the stakes, and this Court’s constitutional analysis should be sharp because the consequence of imprecision is qualitatively more severe in the criminal context.4
While the principal opinion is correct when stating that a vagueness challenge is only applicable to the facts at hand,5 the opinion, in its attempt to support the constitutionality of section 210.115, curiously relies upon a number of cases from Missouri and other jurisdictions concerning different statutes employing similar terminology. All of these cases analyzed applications of statutory language that is not specifically related to, or in proper context with, the application of the wording of section 210.115 to the facts at hand. Applying the principal opinion’s identified standard, these cases are irrelevant to the vagueness analysis of section 210.115.
While the underlying record of the “facts at hand” may be sparse, the police department’s probable cause statement, which is part of the record, and the expert testimony elicited before the trial court are revealing. The probable cause statement recounts Officer Ronald Killins-worth’s interview with Ms. Brown where she admits to being advised of the bruises on the infant when he was admitted to the hospital. In that interview, Ms. Brown also stated that she was provided with what seemed to be a satisfactory explanation from the foster mother that the child sustained the bruises from a booster seat. There is nothing in the record to indicate the age of these bruises or that *57they were related in any way to the child’s condition when the paramedics responded to the child’s residence or when the child presented at the hospital. Reasonable health care practitioners might differ in their assessment of this explanation in association with the child’s medical history and presenting condition, and the expert testimony presented substantiated how the “reasonable cause to suspect” language is totally ambiguous when attempting to apply it under such circumstances.
Expert testimony was elicited from former Senator Emory Melton, political science professor Dr. Alice Bartee, Ph.D., emergency room physician Dr. Bernard Kennetz, and a former director of nursing from Cox Medical Center, Barbara Schaf-fitzel. Senator Melton and Dr. Bartee both testified that section 210.115 was unconstitutionally vague based upon the application of the appropriate legal standards. Dr. Kennetz, as the principal opinion notes, testified that “the words ‘reasonable cause to suspect’ — the operative words of the statute — are subject to varying interpretations.” And while the principal opinion focuses on one statement made by Nurse Scheffitzel regarding her personal comfort level with the statute as a whole, she also testified that she might not always be able to ascertain what comprises a reason to suspect abuse, that nurses could disagree on what constitutes such a reason, and that there was no way that she, as a nurse, could comply with the “reasonable cause to suspect” wording of the law.6
Section 210.115 requires an affirmative act of reporting based upon a subjective and undefined standard. Als the facts and evidence in this case demonstrate, attempting to prosecute Ms. Brown by applying this ambiguous law to her professional assessment and actions with regard to this child’s injuries can only be accomplished by use of conjecture. The legislature failed to provide even minimal guidelines for enforcement of this statute. This failure allows police, prosecutors, and juries to pursue a totally subjective, personally biased, arbitrary and discriminatory application of this law.7 The fear of discriminatory application is intensified when the death of an innocent child is involved.
Section 210.115 fails both constitutional tests for vagueness, and because section 210.120, requiring photographs be taken when abuse is suspected pursuant to section 210.115, is predicated on the undefined standard in section 210.115, it too fails constitutional scrutiny. I would affirm the judgment of the trial court finding sections 210.115 and 210.120 to be unconstitutionally vague.8

. State v. Callen, 45 S.W.3d 888, 889-90 (Mo. banc 2001).

. Id.

. State v. Lee Mechanical Contractors, Inc., 938 S.W.2d 269, 272 (Mo. banc 1997); State v. Shaw, 847 S.W.2d 768, 774 (Mo. banc 1993); Village of Hoffman Estates, 455 U.S. 489, 498-99, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982).

. Id.

. Lee Mechanical Contractors, Inc., 938 S.W.2d at 271.

.The trial court admitted into the record five additional exhibits as an offer of proof from the defendant that the language in section 210.115 was unconstitutionally vague. Those exhibits included a legal journal, a statement from the Emergency Nurses Association, a statement from the Missouri Nurses Association, a statement from four physicians from Cox Health Systems (the hospital where the alleged offense occurred), and a report from the Missouri Department of Health clearing the hospital of complaints. It should also be noted that one of the pre-hearing motions concerned the preservation and production of a report from the Division of Family Services (DFS) who examined the child shortly after his admission to the hospital and found no reason to suspect child abuse.

. See Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 358, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983); Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-109, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972).

. The unfortunate consequence of today’s holding is that all persons named in section 210.115, facing selective and arbitrary prose*58cution, will be required to report every injury sustained by any child under any circumstance. Obviously, a reasonable scenario can be imagined for absolutely any injury that a child sustains to provide "reasonable cause to suspect that a child has been or may be subjected to abuse or neglect.”