12-31-2012 North Carolina:State -v- Daniels
This is a very long read, but one portion is worth the effort, where the statute says "at any place" and the court declared that portion vague, place was not defined so that a reasonable person would know what it means. Accordingly, the statute was held unconstitutional AS APPLIED to this fellow and his circumstances.
See portion which begins with:
In the State's second argument on appeal, the State contends the trial court erred in declaring N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-208.18(a)(3) unconstitutional because Defendant lacked standing to raise a facial challenge to the constitutionality of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-208.18(a)(3). We agree that Defendant did not have standing to raise a facial challenge to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-208.18(a)(3). However, Defendant had standing to bring an as-applied challenge against N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-208.18(a)(3), with regard to the facts surrounding his arrest for being "at any place[,]" Id., on 6 May 2009 and 7 May 2009, on the issue of whether N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-208.18(a)(3) is unconstitutionally vague.
"A litigant who challenges a statute as unconstitutional must have standing. To have standing, he must be adversely affected by the statute." State v. Barker, 138 N.C. App. 304, 307, 531 S.E.2d 228, 230, cert. denied, 352 N.C. 592, 544 S.E.2d 787 (2000) (citation and quotation marks omitted). .... ....
From North Carolina Criminal Law Blog:
Portion of Sex Offender Premises Restriction Held Unconstitutional
In one of its final rulings of 2012, the court of appeals held in State v. Daniels that a portion of the law limiting where some registered sex offenders may go is unconstitutionally vague. In Daniels, the defendant was charged with two counts of violating G.S. 14-208.18(a)(3), which makes it a Class H felony for certain sex offenders to knowingly be “at any place where minors gather for regularly scheduled educational, recreational, or social programs.” The charges stemmed from two visits by the defendant to county parks. In the first, the defendant came to the park to meet his daughter, who was watching a tee ball game at one of the park’s youth baseball fields. In the second, the defendant was playing softball on an adult ball field at a park that also had a youth field.
In his defense, the defendant filed a motion to declare G.S. 14-208.18 unconstitutional on a mix of First Amendment and due process grounds. The trial court granted the motion, declaring that G.S. 14-208.18(a)(3) is unconstitutionally overbroad because it infringes on the defendant’s freedoms of association and religion, and unconstitutionally vague in that it fails to put people of ordinary intelligence on notice of the precise conduct the law prohibits. The trial court further declared G.S. 14-208.18(a)(2), the 300-foot rule described here, unconstitutional, as the facts of the case could have implicated that provision as well. Having deemed the statute unconstitutional, the judge dismissed the charges against the defendant.
The State made three arguments on appeal. ...continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment