Clarity in Criminal Statutes: The Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine

Clarity in Criminal Statutes: The Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine.—Criminal statutes which lack sufficient definiteness or specificity are commonly held "void for vagueness."983 Such legislation "may run afoul of the Due Process Clause because it fails to give adequate guidance to those who would be law-abiding, to advise defendants of the nature of the offense with which they are charged, or to guide courts in trying those who are accused."984 'Men of common intelligence cannot be required to guess at the meaning of [an] enactment.'985

983 Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 308 (1940).

984 Musser v. Utah, 333 U.S. 95, 97 (1948). "The vagueness may be from uncertainty in regard to persons within the scope of the act . . . or in regard to the applicable tests to ascertain guilt." Id. at 97. "Vague laws offend several important values. First, because we assume that man is free to steer between lawful and unlawful conduct, we insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Vague laws may trap the innocent by not providing fair warnings. Second, if arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is to be prevented, laws must provide explicit standards for those who apply them. A vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy matters to policemen, judges, and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory applications." Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-09 (1972), quoted in Village of Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside, 455 U.S. 489, 498 (1982).

985 Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, 515-16 (1948). "The vagueness may be from uncertainty in regard to persons within the scope of the act . . . or in regard to the applicable test to ascertain guilt." Id. Cf. Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104, 110 (1972). Thus, a state statute imposing severe, cumulative punishments upon contractors with the State who pay their workmen less than the "current rate of per diem wages in the locality where the work is performed" was held to be "so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application." Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385 (1926). Similarly, a statute which allowed jurors to require an acquitted defendant to pay the costs of the prosecution, elucidated only by the judge's instruction to the jury that the defendant should only have to pay the costs if it thought him guilty of "some misconduct" though innocent of the crime with which he was charged, was found to fall short of the requirements of due process. Giaccio v. Pennsylvania, 382 U.S. 399 (1966).

For instance, the Court voided for vagueness a criminal statute providing that a person was a "gangster" and subject to fine or imprisonment if he was without lawful employment, had been either convicted at least three times for disorderly conduct or had been convicted of any other crime, and was "known to be a member of a gang of two or more persons." The Court observed that neither common law nor the statute gave the words "gang" or "gangster" definite meaning, that the enforcing agencies and courts were free to construe the terms broadly or narrowly, and that the phrase "known to be a member" was ambiguous. The statute was held void, and the Court refused to allow specification of details in the particular indictment to save it because it was the statute, not the indictment, that prescribed the rules to govern conduct.986

A statute may be so vague or so threatening to constitutionally-protected activity that it can be pronounced wholly unconstitutional; in other words, it is "unconstitutional on its face."987 Thus, for instance, a unanimous Court in Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville988 struck down as invalid on its face a vagrancy ordinance which punished "dissolute persons who go about begging, . . . common night walkers, . . . common railers and brawlers, persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object, habitual loafers, . . . persons neglecting all lawful business and habitually spending their time by frequenting house of ill fame, gaming houses, or places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served, persons able to work but habitually living upon the earnings of their wives or minor children …"989 The ordinance was found to be facially invalid, according to Justice Douglas for the Court, because it did not give fair notice, it did not require specific intent to commit an unlawful act, it permitted and encouraged arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions, it committed too much discretion to policemen, and it criminalized activities which by modern standards are normally innocent.990

986 Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451 (1939); Edelman v. California, 344 U.S. 357 (1953).

987 Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972); Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566 (1974). Generally, a vague statute that regulates in the area of First Amendment guarantees will be pronounced wholly void. Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, 509-10 (1948); Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88 (1940).

988 405 U.S. 156 (1972).

989 405 U.S. at 156 n.1. Similar concerns regarding vagrancy laws had been expressed previously. See, e.g., Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, 540 (1948) (Justice Frankfurter dissenting); Edelman v. California, 344 U.S. 357, 362 (1953) (Justice Black dissenting); Hicks v. District of Columbia, 383 U.S. 252 (1966) (Justice Douglas dissenting).

990 Similarly, an ordinance making it a criminal offense for three or more persons to assemble on a sidewalk and conduct themselves in a manner annoying to passers-by was found impermissibly vague and void on its face because it encroached on the freedom of assembly. Coates v. City of Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611 (1971). See Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 382 U.S. 87 (1965) (conviction under statute imposing penalty for failure to "move on" voided); Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964) (conviction on trespass charges arising out of a sit-in at a drugstore lunch counter voided since the trespass statute did not give fair notice that it was a crime to refuse to leave private premises after being requested to do so); Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352 (1983) (requirement that person detained in valid Terry stop provide "credible and reliable" identification is facially void as encouraging arbitrary enforcement).

On the other hand, some less vague statutes may be held unconstitutional only in application to the defendant before the Court.991 For instance, where the terms of a statute could be applied both to innocent or protected conduct (such as free speech) and unprotected conduct, but the valuable effects of the law outweigh its potential general harm, such a statute will be held unconstitutional only as applied.992 Thus, in Palmer v. City of Euclid,993 an ordinance punishing "suspicious persons" defined as "[a]ny person who wanders about the streets or other public ways or who is found abroad at late or unusual hours in the night without any visible or lawful business and who does not give satisfactory account of himself" was found void only as applied to a particular defendant. In Palmer, the Court found that the defendant, having dropped off a passenger and begun talking into a two-way radio, was engaging in conduct which could not reasonably be anticipated as fitting within the "without any visible or lawful business" portion of the ordinance's definition.

991 Where the terms of a vague statute do not threaten a constitutionally protected right, and where the conduct at issue in a particular case is clearly proscribed, then a due process challenge is unlikely to be successful. Where the conduct in question is at the margins of the meaning of an unclear statute, however, it will be struck down as applied. E.g., United States v. National Dairy Corp., 372 U.S. 29 (1963).

992 Palmer v. City of Euclid, 402 U.S. 544 (1971); Village of Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside, 455 U.S. 489, 494-95 (1982).

993 402 U.S. 544 (1971).

Loitering statutes which are triggered by failure to obey a police dispersal order are suspect, and may be struck down if they leave a police officer absolute discretion to give such orders.994 Thus, a Chicago ordinance which required police to disperse all persons in the company of "criminal street gang members" while in a public place with "no apparent purpose," failed to meet the "requirement that a legislature establish minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement."995 The Court noted that "no apparent purpose" is inherently subjective because its application depends on whether some purpose is "apparent" to the officer, who would presumably have the discretion to ignore such apparent purposes as engaging in idle conversation or enjoying the evening air.996 On the other hand, where such a statute additionally required a finding that the defendant was intent on causing inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm, it was upheld against facial challenge, at least as applied to a defendant who was interfering with the ticketing of a car by the police.997

Statutes with vague standards may nonetheless be upheld if the text of statute is interpreted by a court with sufficient clarity. Thus, the civil commitment of persons of "such conditions of emotional instability . . . as to render such person irresponsible for his conduct with respect to sexual matters and thereby dangerous to other persons" was upheld by the Court, based on a state court's construction of the statute as only applying to persons who, by habitual course of misconduct in sexual matters, have evidenced utter lack of power to control their sexual impulses and are likely to inflict injury. The underlying conditions—habitual course of misconduct in sexual matters and lack of power to control impulses and likelihood of attack on others—were viewed as calling for evidence of past conduct pointing to probable consequences and as being as susceptible of proof as many of the criteria constantly applied in criminal proceedings.998

Conceptually related to the problem of definiteness in criminal statutes is the problem of notice. Ordinarily, it can be said that ignorance of the law affords no excuse, or, in other instances, that the nature of the subject matter or conduct may be sufficient to alert one that there are laws which must be observed.999 On occasion the Court has even approved otherwise vague statutes because the statute forbade only "willful" violations, which the Court construed as requiring knowledge of the illegal nature of the proscribed conduct.1000 Where conduct is not in and of itself blameworthy, however, a criminal statute may not impose a legal duty without notice.1001

994 Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 358 (1983).

995 City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41 (1998).

996 527 U.S. at 62.

997 Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104 (1972).

998 Minnesota ex rel. Pearson v. Probate Court, 309 U.S. 270 (1940).

999 E.g., United States v. Freed, 401 U.S. 601 (1971). Persons may be bound by a novel application of a statute, not supported by Supreme Court or other "fundamentally similar" case precedent, so long as the court can find that, under the circumstance, "unlawfulness . . . is apparent" to the defendant. United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 271-72 (1997).

1000 E.g., Boyce Motor Lines v. United States, 342 U.S. 337 (1952); Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379, 395 (1979). Cf. Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 101- 03 (1945) (plurality opinion). The Court have even done so when the statute did not explictly include such a mens rea requirement. E.g., Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246 (1952).

1001 See, e.g. Lambert v. California, 355 U.S. 225 (1957) (invalidating a municipal code that made it a crime for anyone who had ever been convicted of a felony to remain in the city for more than five days without registering.). In Lambert, the Court emphasized that the act of being in the city was not itself blameworthy, holding that the failure to register was quite "unlike the commission of acts, or the failure to act under circumstances that should alert the doer to the consequences of his deed." "Where a person did not know of the duty to register and where there was no proof of the probability of such knowledge, he may not be convicted consistently with due process. Were it otherwise, the evil would be as great as it is when the law is written in print too fine to read or in a language foreign to the community." Id. at 228, 229-30.

The question of notice has also arisen in the context of "judge-made" law. While the Ex Post Facto Clauses forbids retroactive application of state and federal criminal laws, no such explicit restriction applies to the courts. Thus, when a state court abrogated the common law rule that a victim must die within a "year and a day" in order for homicide charges to be brought in Rogers v. Tennessee,1002 the question arose whether such rule could be applied to acts occurring before the court's decision. The dissent argued vigorously that unlike the traditional common law practice of adapting legal principles to fit new fact situations, the court's decision was an outright reversal of existing law. Under this reasoning, the new "law" could not be applied retrospectively. The majority held, however, that only those holdings which were "unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which had been express prior to the conduct in issue"1003 could not be applied retroactively. The relatively archaic nature of "year and a day rule", its abandonment by most jurisdictions, and its inapplicability to modern times were all cited as reasons that the defendant had fair warning of the possible abrogation of the common law rule.

1002 532 U.S. 451 (2001).

1003 Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 354 (1964).

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Last modified: June 9, 2014