Court Opinion

ID: 9780688
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 02:26:20.398949+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:04.260457
License: Public Domain

Atcheson, J.,
concurring: The majority correctly concludes Defendant Antonio Jones has advanced no grounds requiring reversal of his conviction, and I join in that result. I address two points: the interpretation of K.S.A. 21-3749, proscribing “dealing in pirated recordings”; and the prosecutor s examination of Sergeant Gallagher injecting the issue of “domestic violence” into this case. I would construe the statute somewhat differently than the majority does. And the majority, in my view, glosses over the seriousness of the prosecutor’s misconduct.

Piracy Statute

The majority interprets K.S.A. 21-3749 to include an element requiring the defendant to know or have reason to know that the way the recordings were produced was against the law. I don’t read the statute to require that knowledge. The defendant must know or have reason to know that the recordings were made in the manner criminalized in K.S.A. 21-3748, the companion statute prohibiting “piracy of recordings.” The defendant need not appreciate that the making or production of the recordings was, in fact, illegal.
The Kansas appellate courts apparently have never construed either of the recording piracy statutes. They were adopted at the same time and should be considered together. Dealing in pirated recordings under K.S.A. 21-3749 specifically outlines the prohibited conduct as requiring trafficking in recordings produced in violation of tire companion piracy statute, K.S.A. 21-3748.
Under K.S.A. 21-3748, a person may not duplicate a recording for purposes of selling, renting, or otherwise profiting from the copy without the consent of the owner. The statute specifically protects the sounds contained in the recordings, regardless of the medium used to present them, e.g., disc, film, or tape. The owner is the person or entity holding legal rights in the audio material contained in the recording. Thus, copying a DVD or a CD with the intent to sell the copy violates K.S.A. 21-3748 if the owner of the music or other sounds has not given permission. In turn, K.S.A. 21-3749, under which Jones was convicted, prohibits a person from distributing such a copy for financial gain or possessing it for that *530purpose “knowing or having reasonable grounds to know that such article was produced in violation of the law.”
I would submit K.S.A. 21-3749 requires: (1) the copy to be produced for financial gain without the owner’s permission; and (2) the distributor knows or has reason to know that it was produced for financial gain without the owner’s permission. Whether the distributor knows or suspects that course of conduct to be illegal is irrelevant. The language requiring the distributor to know or have reason to know how the recording was produced was not intended to change the general rule that ignorance of a criminal statute affords no defense to the crime. K.S.A. 21-3202(1) (Under the Kansas Criminal Code, “criminal intent” does not require proof the defendant has knowledge of the statute criminalizing the conduct.); K.S.A. 21-3203(1) (Ignorance of the law may be a defense if it “negates” a mental state specifically made an element of the offense.).
I believe the legislature meant to shield a distributor from criminal liability if he or she had no reason to suspect the recordings were produced in anything other than a legitimate fashion under a licensing agreement with the owner. That is, if the packaging, appearance, and content of tire pirated recordings were essentially indistinguishable from legitimately produced recordings of tire same material and the distributor acquired them in a commercially reasonable way, the distributor would have a defense to violating K.S.A. 21-3749. (The distributor might not, for example, if he or she bought 100 DVDs of a movie still in the theaters from someone selling them off the back of an unmarked truck at midnight for half the usual price of new releases.) That construction permits a defense based on a mistake of fact, something relatively commonplace. See State v. Diaz, 44 Kan. App. 2d 870, 873-74, 241 P.3d 1018 (2010) (discussing nature and scope of mistake of fact as defense), rev. denied 291 Kan. 913 (2011); General v. State, 367 Md. 475, 483-84, 789 A.2d 102 (2002) (noting general rule that a mistake of fact affords a defense to a crime if it negates the culpable mental state the government must prove).
The statute was not intended to afford a defense to a distributor selling patently homemade or otherwise obviously bootlegged re*531cordings on the grounds that he or she had no idea it might be illegal under Kansas law to make a buck that way. But that is how the majority reads the statute. The majority, then, finds a defense based on a mistake of law — a comparative rarity. See State v. Watson, 273 Kan. 426, 434-35, 44 P.3d 357 (2002) (noting “ ‘the deeply-rooted principle’ ” that “ ‘ignorance of the law or a mistake of law’ ” does not furnish a defense to criminal prosecution).
So, in my view, the majority construes the statute more favorably to Jones than the language actually requires. Given what I believe to be the correct interpretation, Jones had no legal basis to argue to the juiy that his ignorance of the law or his failure to appreciate the illegality of his conduct amounted to a defense. In turn, there could be no error in any limitation the district court put on his making that argument. I, therefore, agree with the majority that Jones suffered no legal detriment based on the permitted scope of his lawyer’s closing argument.
Interpreting the “knowing” clause of K.S.A. 21-3749 is hardly free from doubt. The language is unusual in the Kansas Criminal Code. Similar phrasing appears in K.S.A. 21-4303(a), criminalizing the knowing management or operation of bingo games in violation of the law, but the appellate courts have not construed that provision either.
Roughly comparable language turns up in some federal criminal statutes. In United States v. International Min'ls Corp., 402 U.S. 558, 559-60, 562, 91 S. Ct. 1697, 29 L. Ed. 2d 178 (1971), a divided United States Supreme Court held that 18 U.S.C. § 834, a criminal statute punishing anyone “who knowingly violates any such regulation” adopted by the Interstate Commerce Commission governing the transportation of corrosive liquids, did not malee the defendant’s knowledge of the regulation an element of the offense. The majority concluded the “ ‘knowingly’ violate” language should be “construed as a shorthand designation for specific acts or omissions which violate the Act.” 402 U.S. at 562. And the statute, thus construed, would be applied in conformity with “the rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse.” 402 U.S. at 562. The majority found no obligation upon the government to prove a defendant knew of the regulation to convict. 402 U.S. at 563. But a defendant *532could rely on a mistake of fact as a defense — he or she honestly believed the transportéd liquid was distilled water rather than sulfuric acid. 402 U.S. at 563-64. Three dissenting justices would have read the statute as requiring actual knowledge of the regulation to convict. 402 U.S. at 565 (Stewart, J., joined by Harlan and Brennan, JJ., dissenting).
Federal courts have since applied the same construction to other similarly worded statutes. See, e.g., United State v. Lynch, 233 F.3d 1139, 1141-42 (9th Cir. 2000) (violation of Archeological Resources Protection Act, 16 U.S.C. § 470ee[a] [1994]); United States v. Wilson, 133 F.3d 251, 260-62 (4th Cir. 1997) (discharge of fill dirt into wetlands in violation of Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. §1319 [c][2] [A] [1994], criminally punishing “anyone who knotoingly violates section 1311”). The detailed discussion in Wilson.is instructive. The court cited the construction applied in International Minis and found it transferred readily to the Clean Water Act to establish drat the government need not prove the defendant knew his or her conduct to be illegal to convict. Wilson, 133 F.3d at 261-62. The court pointed out that a contrary interpretation would run counter to the longstanding principle that ignorance of the law provides no defense and that congressional deviation from a principle of that sort should not be lightly inferred. 133 F.3d at 261-62. Those considerations also weigh against the majority’s interpretation of K.S.A. 21-3749.
I hesitate to read too much into the chronology of the United State Supreme Court’s ruling and the adoption of the Kansas antipiracy statutes. But International Min'ls was decided in 1971, and K.S.A. 21-3749 was enacted 5 years later. It is hardly unreasonable to suggest the Kansas Legislature was aware of that decision and took account of the decision in adopting the language of the anti-piracy statute. See Wilson, 133 F.3d at 263 (finding adoption of particular language in Clean Water Act after International Minis to be of some import in construing that language). More to the point, perhaps, had the Kansas Legislature intended to require proof that a defendant actually knew malting unauthorized copies of recordings for profit violated the Kansas statute, it would have used different language, especially after International Min'ls. The *533legislature might have phrased the provision as “knowing or having reason to know of the specific prohibition in K.S.A. 21-3748” or “knowing or having reason to know of K.S.A. 21-3748.”
On balance, I would opt for a reading of K.S.A. 21-3749 that permits a mistake-of-fact defense but not a distinctly uncommon mistake-of-law defense and, thus, hews to settled doctrine in rejecting ignorance of the law as an excuse. The reading I propose would be consistent with comparable federal authority. And it would afford a defense to the honest distributor mistakenly handling sophisticated bootlegs but not to Jones or others like him. That distributor seems more deserving of a defense than the individual knowingly trafficking in counterfeit recordings for profit but disclaiming any knowledge of the specific Kansas statute criminalizing that conduct. The deliberate trafficker is, at the very least, blameworthy as a cheat. Absent the clearest of signals from the Kansas Legislature, he or she ought not escape criminal penalties by pleading empty-headedness. I do not find that signal in K.S.A. 21-3749.

Prosecutors Questions

In this case, the prosecutor questioned Officer Gallagher, one of the lead investigators, in a way that directly raised the specter of domestic violence and suggested that Serena Stone, the mother of Jones’ child, was the victim of such abuse at the hands of Jones. The line of questioning apparently was intended to explain why Stone gave testimony at trial favorable to Jones and in conflict with what she had supposedly told Officer Gallagher during the investigation. That is, she feared Jones would abuse her if she didn’t change her story. But the record strongly indicates the prosecutor lacked any factual basis to conclude Stone had been the victim of domestic violence and, therefore, had absolutely no legitimate basis to pose the questions. See State v. McCaslin, 291 Kan. 697, Syl. ¶ 12, 245 P.3d 1030 (2011) (“A.prosecutor may not make assertions of fact in the form of a question to a witness absent a good-faith basis for believing the asserted matters to be true.”).
At trial, Stone testified that she and Jones had known each other for years and had a 9-year-old daughter together. Jones provided *534financial and emotional support to Stone and their daughter. He typically saw them three times a week. Stone testified that she and Jones had not had an intimate, marital-like relationship for several years.
As outlined in die majority opinion, Stone had sold copies of movies Jones had made. At trial, she testified that she kept the money. But Officer Gallagher testified that she had told him that she gave the money to Jones. Jones’ receipt of money for die DVDs he made was a crucial part of proving the charge against him. So the prosecutor wanted to discredit Stone’s trial testimony.
The prosecutor chose to do so through the questions about domestic violence. As set forth in the majority opinion, the prosecutor asked several questions eliciting testimony from Officer Gallagher that victims of domestic violence often change their accounts of events. Jones’ lawyer then examined Officer Gallagher and established that there was no evidence that Jones had ever physically abused Stone. In closing argument, the prosecutor more or less disavowed the questions he had asked.
Having reviewed the trial record, I agree with the majority that the lawyer for Jones failed to lodge a sufficient objection to the questions for us to review the issue for reversible error. The lawyer made one general objection to the first question referring to domestic violence. The specifics of the objection and the district court’s ruling were made off the record. The prosecutor then continued the line of questioning with Officer Gallagher without further objection. Jones’ lawyer then defused the issue to some extent with his questions. The judge was not asked to instruct the jury to disregard the prosecutor’s questions and Gallagher’s answers.
Jones’ lawyer might have considered that approach to be the most effective way of handling the matter, and a legitimate argument could be made for it. But whatever the reason, studied or not, the result failed to preserve any claimed error for appellate review. Without any additional objection or a request for a curative instruction, Jones’ trial lawyer failed to give the district court an opportunity to remedy any harm. And without a record on the first objection, we cannot evaluate it or the trial court’s ruling for error.
*535None of that, however, detracts from the deliberate, flagrant misconduct on the prosecutors part. The improper inquiry was not a slip of the tongue or a single, poorly phrased question that could be excused as the occasional byproduct of the unscripted give-and-take of trial practice. The prosecutor deployed a calculated line of questions aimed at discrediting Stone as a victim of Jones’ violence and someone fearful of more of the same if she didn’t change her testimony. He seemingly did so without regard for the truth of that suggestion.
In closing argument to the jury, the prosecutor acknowledged Stone and Jones “have a great relationship.” The prosecutor went on to indicate Stone’s reliance on Jones for financial and emotional support might have caused her to change her story on the witness stand — not because she feared him but because she retained a genuine affection for him and depended upon him.
Showing that a witness has warm feelings toward a party or benefits financially from a party are legitimate bases to challenge the veracity of testimony. See State v. Scott, 39 Kan. App. 2d 49, 56, 177 P.3d 972 (2008) (“One of the methods or techniques for attacking the credibility of a witness is to show partiality, including bias, motive, and interest in the outcome.”). The prosecutor certainly could have done so in questioning Stone or possibly Officer Gallagher. But the prosecutor could not have taken the tack he did by substituting an apparently unfounded basis to challenge Stone’s honesty for a legitimate one that might be considered less effective and almost certainly less dramatic.
Given the record, I must agree with the majority that the prosecutor’s misconduct fails to furnish a basis to reverse the conviction.