Court Opinion

ID: 9885134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:32:35.404671+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:44.409928
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Ward, dissenting: I must disagree with the majority’s holding that the statute is not unconstitutionally vague and indefinite. To me the statute plainly fails to give constitutionally adequate notice of the conduct it would proscribe. It could serve as a classroom model to illustrate an insufficiently specific penal statute. The standard of constitutional specificity required for a penal statute was described in Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 453, 83 L. Ed. 888, 890, 59 S. Ct. 618. The Supreme Court said: “No one may be required at peril of life, liberty or property to speculate as to the meaning of penal statutes. All are entitled to be informed as to what the State commands or forbids. * * * ‘That the terms of a penal statute creating a new offense must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties, is a well-recognized requirement * * *. And a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application, violates the first essential of due process of law.’ ” One reading the language “permit the life of such child to be endangered, or the health of such child to be injured, or wilfully cause or permit such child to be placed in such a situation that its life or health may be endangered,” can only conclude that against this standard it is fatally imprecise as to the conduct proscribed. The majority is impressed by the fact that the statute has endured since 1877 and that no case has held it vague or uncertain. I am impressed by the fact that there is no record of an appeal from a conviction under the statute. I consider that this signifies that State’s Attorneys have prm dently avoided the prosecutive use of this legally suspect statute for almost a century. Too, the majority rejects annoying hypothetical sitúations posed by the defendant by recourse to holdings that the validity of a statutory provision will be considered only upon the complaint of one who is directly affected “unless the unconstitutional feature is so pervasive as to render the entire Act invalid.” I do not consider that those holdings are germane. There is no question here of an unconstitutional feature; the entire statute is void. The majority also looks at the evidence presented and then observes that this case “involves the inflicting of physical injury upon a three-year-old child, conduct clearly within the proscription of the statute.” This is to me expedient reasoning and if acceptable here, I suppose could be utilized in almost every case where the constitutional definiteness of a statute might be considered after conviction. The protections described in Lanzetta would become illusory. The question before us is whether the statute which the defendant was charged with violating was illegally vague and uncertain. I would hold that the vagueness and uncertainty of the statute offend the due-process clause and that the statute is is unconstitutional. Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 83 L. Ed. 888, 59 S. Ct. 618. Schaefer and Kluczynski, JJ., join in this dissent.