Chicago v. Morales

NAME:	Chicago (“P”) v. Morales (“R”)	119 S. Ct. 1849	1999
FACTS:	· In 1992, the Chicago City Council enacted the Gang Congregation Ordinance, which prohibits “criminal street gang members” from “loitering” with one another or with other persons in any public place. · The council found that a continuing increase in criminal street gang activity was largely responsible for the city’s rising murder rate, as well as an escalation of violent…crimes. It further found that “loitering in public places by criminal street gang members creates a justifiable fear for the safety of persons…[and] aggressive action is necessary to preserve the city’s streets and other public places so that the public may use such places without fear.” · Ordinance involves 4 predicates: (1) the police officer must reasonably believe that at least one of the persons present in a “public place” is a “criminal street gang member;” (2) person must be “loitering,” which the ordinance defines as “remain[ing] in any one place with no apparent purpose;” (3) officer must then order “all” of the persons to disperse and remove themselves “from the area;” and (4) must obey the police officer’s order. · The Chicago P.D. promulgated General Order 92-4 to provide guidelines to govern its enforcement.
PROCEDURE:	Two trial judges upheld the constitutionality of the ordinance, but eleven others ruled that it was invalid.
ISSUE:	Did the Supreme Court of Illinois correctly hold that the ordinance violates the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution?
HOLDING:	YES. The Illinois Supreme Court correctly concluded that the ordinance does not provide sufficiently specific limits on the enforcement discretion of the police “to meet constitutional standards for definiteness and clarity.”
REASONING:	· (RULE): It is established that a law fails to meet the requirements of the Due Process Clause if it is so vague and standardless that it leaves the public uncertain as to the conduct it prohibits…” · The vagueness that dooms this ordinance is not the product of uncertainty about the normal meaning of “loitering,” but rather about what loitering is covered by the ordinance and what is not. A number of state courts have upheld ordinances that criminalize loitering combined with some other overt act or evidence of criminal intent. Conversely, courts have invalidated laws that do not join the term “loitering” with a second specific element of the crime. · (RULE): The purpose of the fair notice requirement is to enable the ordinary citizen to conform his or her conduct to the law. “No one may be required at peril of life, liberty, or property to speculate as to the meaning of penal statutes.” – Lanzetta v. New Jersey · Loitering is the conduct that the ordinance is designated to prohibit. If the loitering is in fact harmless and innocent, the dispersal order itself is an unjustified impairment of liberty. · Lack of clarity in the description of the loiterer’s duty to obey a dispersal order might not render the ordinance unconstitutionally vague if the definition of the forbidden conduct were clear, but it does support our conclusion that the entire ordinance fails to give the ordinary citizen adequate notice of what is forbidden and what is permitted. · Also, the broad sweep of the ordinance also violates “’the requirement that a legislature establish minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement.’” There are no such guidelines in the ordinance. The principal source of the vast discretion conferred on the police in this case is the definition of loitering as “to remain in any one place with no apparent purpose.” The Illinois Supreme Court interprets that definition to “provide absolute discretion to police officers to determine what activities constitute loitering.”
DISPOSITION:	Judgment affirmed

Kolender v. Lawson

NAME:	Kolender (“P”) v. Lawson (“D”)	405 U.S. 156	1972
FACTS:	· D was detained or arrested on approximately 15 occasions between 3/75 and 1/77 pursuant to Cal Penal Code Ann. § 647(e). D was prosecuted twice, and convicted once.
PROCEDURE:	D brought a civil action in the District Court for the Southern District of California seeking a declaratory judgment that § 647(e) is unconstitutional, a mandatory injunction seeking to restrain enforcement of the statute, and compensatory and punitive damages against the various officers who detained him.
ISSUE:	Is the Cal. Penal Code Ann. § 647(e) unconstitutional and void-for-vagueness?
HOLDING:	YES. The statute is unconstitutionally vague within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment by failing to clarify what is contemplated by the requirement that a suspect provide a “credible and reliable” identification.
REASONING:	· Our Constitution is designed to maximize individual freedoms w/in a framework of ordered liberty. Statutory limitations on those freedoms are examined for substantive authority and content as well as for definiteness or certainty of expression. · (RULE): The void-for-vagueness doctrine requires that a penal statute define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. · Section 647(e), as presently drafted and as construed by the state courts, contains no standard for determining what a suspect has to do in order to satisfy the requirement to provide a “credible and reliable” identification. As such, the statute vests virtually complete discretion in the hands of the police to determine whether the suspect has satisfied the statute and must be permitted to go on his way in the absence of probable cause to arrest. · It is clear that the full discretion accorded to the police to determine whether the suspect has provided a “credible and reliable” identification necessarily “entrust[s] lawmaking ‘to the moment-to-moment judgment of the policeman on his beat,’” and “confers on police a virtually unrestrained power to arrest and charge persons with a violation.”
DISPOSITION:	Judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed
DISSENT:	None

Papachristou v. Jacksonville

NAME:	Papachristou (“P”) v. Jacksonville (“D”)	405 U.S. 156	1972
FACTS:	· The various P’s under this case were charged with various offenses such as “prowling by auto,” “loitering,” “common thief,” for having no identification and because the officers did not believe their story.
PROCEDURE:	The case involves 8 Ds who were convicted in a Florida municipal court of violating a Jacksonville, Florida, vagrancy ordinance.
ISSUE:	Are the charges against the various P’s enforceable under Jacksonville Ordinance Code § 26-57?
HOLDING:	NO. The Jacksonville ordinance cannot be squared with our constitutional standards and is plainly unconstitutional.
REASONING:	· (RULE): Lanzetta v. New Jersey – “all persons are entitled to be informed as to what the State commands or forbids.” · The Jacksonville ordinance makes criminal activities which by modern standards are normally innocent · (RULE): U.S. v. Reese – “It would certainly be dangerous if the legislature could set a net large enough to catch all possible offenders, and leave it to the courts to step inside and say who could be rightfully detained, and who should be set at large.” · Here the net cast is large, not to give the courts the power to pick and choose but to increase the arsenal of the police. The ordinance’s vagueness places in the hands of the Jacksonville police the effect of unfettered discretion. · We allow our police to make arrests only on “probable cause” (4th and 14th amendment standard), not on suspicion. Therefore, a direction by a legislature to the police to arrest all “suspicious” persons would not pass constitutional muster. · Vagrancy laws of the Jacksonville type teach that the scales of justice are so tipped that even-handed administration of the law is not possible.
DISPOSITION:	Reversed
DISSENT:	None

People v. Hall

NAME:	People (“P”) v. Hall (“D”)	557 N.Y.S.2d 879	1990
FACTS:	· 5.16.1986 – D became engaged in a fistfight with a man in a grocery store. After being separated, D left to procure a gun and then proceeded to return to the scene where he waited for the man to exit the store. D thereupon opened fire on the man but inadvertently struck Brigette Garrett, once in the arm and in the abdomen. · Garrett was, at the time, 28-32 weeks pregnant, and the shot to the stomach severed the placenta, resulting in a lack of oxygen to the fetus which mandated immediate delivery. · The baby was born by Caesarean and lived for 36hrs. before dying from a series of problems attributed to prematurity and oxygen deprivation.
PROCEDURE:	None given
ISSUE:	Can an individual be convicted of the homicide of an infant who succumbs following a premature Caesarean birth necessitated by the shooting of her pregnant mother?
HOLDING:	YES. Since D’s conduct in firing a loaded gun into a crowd on the street was of such a nature as would enable a rational person to comprehend that it is a gross deviation from the normal standard of behavior, thereby creating a substantial and unjustifiable risk that someone might be shot and injured or killed, is absurd for him to complain that he did not receive fair notice that he was acting in a criminal manner.
REASONING:	· (RULE): Pub. Health Law 4130(1) – Live birth is defined as the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy, which, after such separation, breathes or shows any other evidence of life… · (RULE): “fetal death” as described in section 4160(1) – death prior to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception; the death is indicated by the fact that after such separation, the fetus does not breathe or show any other evidence of life… · Atallia had been fully expelled from her mother; she was no longer attached to the placenta, had a heartbeat and was capable of independent circulation…under these circumstances, there can be no doubt that she was born alive… · Illness is not equivalent to the absence of life and the fact that Atallia was very sick at birth hardly means that she was not alive. · D was charged with causing the death of a person who had been born and lived after birth, not with causing the death of a fetus, and he was prosecuted under this theory (See U.S. v. Spencer and Williams v. State) · (RULE): U.S. v. Harriss – A criminal statute violates the prohibition against ex post facto law only if it does not furnish a person of ordinary intelligence with fair notice that contemplated actions are forbidden by law. · It is impossible to perceive how an individual of even less than ordinary intelligence can fail to be aware that standing on a street and firing at someone in a crowd on the other side is not lawful conduct…D’s behavior after the shooting in immediately riding himself of the gun and lying low for the next several days clearly indicates that he recognized the criminality involved in his actions.
DISPOSITION:	Judgment affirmed
DISSENT:	None

Keeler v. Superior Court

NAME:	Keeler (“P”) v. Superior Court (“R”)	470 P.2d 617	1970
FACTS:	· Mrs. Keeler, wife of the P who became pregnant by Ernest Vogt, a man she had been seeing for some time was driving home when P had stopped her on the side of the road. · P said, “I hear you’re pregnant. If you are you had better stay away from the girls and from here. · After helping her out of her car and noticing she was in fact pregnant, he became extremely upset and said “I’m going to stomp it out of you.” He then proceeded to knee her abdomen, and strike her in the face with several blows. · Upon arriving at the hospital, the baby’s head was found to be severely fractured, and it was delivered stillborn. The injury could have been the result of force applied to the mother’s abdomen. · It was concluded by a medical expert that, “with reasonable medical certainty the fetus had developed to the state of viability.”
PROCEDURE:	P was charged with, among other things, murder in that he “unlawfully kill[ed] a human being, to with Baby Girl Vogt, with malice aforethought.” His motion to set aside the information for lack of probable cause was denied, and he now seeks a writ of prohibition (prevent a lower court from exceeding its jurisdiction).
ISSUE:	Is an unborn but viable fetus a “human being” within the meaning of the California statute defining murder?
HOLDING:	NO. The Legislature did not intend such a meaning, and that for the court to construe the statute to the contrary and apply it to the P would exceed our judicial power and deny P due process of law.
REASONING:	· (RULE): Pen. Code 6 – “No act or omission” accomplished after the code has taken effect “is criminal or punishable, except as prescribed or authorized by this code, or by some of the statutes which it specifies as continuing in force and as not affected by its provisions, or by some ordinance,…” · (RULE): Connally v. General Constr. Co. – “…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…” · (RULE): U.S. Const., art. I, §§ 9, 10 – This requirement of fair warning is reflected in the constitutional prohibition against the enactment of ex post facto (after the fact) laws. · (RULE): Bouie v. City of Columbia – “…the same effect occurs when such an act is made punishable under a preexisting statute but by means of an unforeseeable judicial enlargement thereof.” · (RULE): “Indeed, an unforeseeable judicial enlargement of a criminal statute, applied retroactively, operates precisely like an ex post facto law (one that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which is innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action), such as the Constitution forbids. · The court found no reported decision of the California courts which should have given P notice that the killing of an unborn but viable fetus was prohibited by section 187. · A viable fetus “in the process of being born” is a human being within the meaning of the homicide statutes; and it does not hold that a fetus, however viable, which is not “in the process of being born” is a “human being” in the law of homicide.
DISPOSITION:	Writ of prohibition granted
DISSENT:	[BURKE]: The legislature has not “defined the crime of murder in California to apply only to the unlawful and malicious killing one who has been born alive,” but simply used the broad term “human being” and directed the courts to construe that term according to its “fair import” with a view to effect the objects of the homicide statutes and promote justice. There is no good reason why a fully viable fetus should not be considered a “human being” under those statutes and to construe them as such would not create any new offense, and would not deny P fair warning or due process.