Com. v. Mayfield

• Decision Date: 24 September 2003
• Citation: 574 Pa. 460,832 A.2d 418
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant v. Eileen MAYFIELD, Appellee.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

832 A.2d 418

574 Pa. 460

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant v. Eileen MAYFIELD, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued May 13, 2003.

Decided September 24, 2003.

Mary Macneil Killinger, Patricia Eileen Coonahan, Bruce C. Castor, Jr., Norristown, for the Com, of PA, Appellant.

Jeffrey Allen Sigman, Feasterville, for Eileen Mayfield, Appellee.

Before: CAPPY, C.J., and CASTILLE, NIGRO, NEWMAN, SAYLOR, EAKIN and LAMB, JJ.

OPINION

JUSTICE EAKIN.

This case presents the question whether the Institutional Sexual Assault Statute, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3124.2, is unconstitutional. We hold it is not.

Appellee was a corrections officer at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility when she allegedly engaged in sexual acts with three inmates, including performing oral sex on an inmate, rubbing her buttocks on an inmate's groin area, and grabbing an inmate's buttocks. Appellee was charged with three counts of institutional sexual assault, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3124.2. She moved to quash the bills of information and have the charges dismissed. The trial court granted the motion after finding § 3124.2 unconstitutionally vague, overbroad, and violative of due process for lacking an express mens rea requirement. The Commonwealth appealed directly to this Court pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S. § 722(7).¹

The Institutional Sexual Assault Statute provides:

(a) General rule.—Except as provided in sections 3121 (relating to rape), 3122.1 (relating to statutory sexual assault), 3123 (relating to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse), 3124.1 (relating to sexual assault) and 3125 (relating to aggravated indecent assault), a person who is an employee or agent of the Department of Corrections or a county correctional authority, youth development center, youth forestry camp, State or county juvenile detention facility, other licensed residential facility serving children and youth, or mental health or mental retardation facility or institution commits a felony of the third degree when that person engages in sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse or indecent contact with an inmate, detainee, patient or resident.

(b) Definition.—As used in this section, the term "agent" means a person who is assigned to work in a State or county correctional or juvenile detention facility, a youth development center, youth forestry camp, other licensed residential facility serving children and youth, or mental health or mental retardation facility or institution who is employed by any State or county agency or any person employed by an entity providing contract services to the agency.

18 Pa.C.S. § 3124.2.²

"[W]e begin our analysis by recognizing that there is a strong presumption in the law that legislative enactments do not violate the constitution. Moreover, there is a heavy burden of persuasion upon one who challenges the constitutionality of a statute." Commonwealth v. Barud, 545 Pa. 297, 681 A.2d 162, 165 (1996) (citations omitted). As a matter of statutory construction, we presume "the General Assembly does not intend to violate the Constitution of the United States or of this Commonwealth." 1 Pa.C.S. § 1922(3). A statute will not be declared unconstitutional unless it clearly, palpably, and plainly violates the Constitution; all doubts are to be resolved in favor of a finding of constitutionality. Commonwealth v. Hendrickson, 555 Pa. 277, 724 A.2d 315, 317 (1999).

I.

The trial court concluded § 3124.2 was unconstitutionally vague. The court perceived manifold ambiguities in the statute: "It does not sufficiently define vital terms such as inmate, employee, agent or facility." Trial Court Opinion, 2/21/02, at 4. "[It] does not require that the assault occur in a facility, never mind the relevant facility; it could occur anywhere off-site." Id. "Nor ... does our statute require that the employee be on-duty, acting in his/her official role or capacity when the prohibited conduct occurs." Id. In the trial court's view, these ambiguities raised worrisome questions:

The statute does not indicate whether the employee must have official and/or direct contact with the inmates, or whether he/she could be an administrator or painting sub-contractor. The statute is nebulous with regard to sexual encounters between employee/agents of one county and inmates of another. The statute gives no guidance as to whether there are exceptions for married couples who fall within the categories. In short, the statute is unclear as to time, place, perpetrator and victim; it is vague.

Id., at 4-5.

With these alleged defects in mind, we turn to the constitutional vagueness standard:

[T]he 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.... [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.

Commonwealth v. Heinbaugh, 467 Pa. 1, 354 A.2d 244, 246 (1976) (quoting Connally v. General Constr. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391, 46 S.Ct. 126, 70 L.Ed. 322 (1926)). "[T]he 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." Commonwealth v. Mikulan, 504 Pa. 244, 470 A.2d 1339, 1342 (1983) (quoting Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983)). Due process is satisfied if the statute provides reasonable standards by which a person may gauge his future conduct. Heinbaugh, at 246.

Appellee contends the terms "inmate" and "employee" are undefined, and thus unconstitutionally vague. She also argues § 3124.2 is infirm for not specifying whether "inmate" includes those on work release or furlough, and for failing to indicate whether an "employee" must be on duty or employed at the same facility where the "inmate" is housed. In support of this argument, appellee hypothesizes a number of fanciful scenarios in which § 3124.2 would trap the unwitting. For example: "Conceivably a prison janitor may be solicited for and have sex with a mental patient who has escaped from housing in another county or state or country, without knowledge of that status and be convicted under this statute."³ Brief for Appellee, at 12. Whether or not these law school hypotheticals are plausible, they are entirely beside the point. "It is well established that vagueness challenges to statutes which do not involve First Amendment freedoms must be examined in the light of the facts of the case at hand."⁴ Heinbaugh, at 245 (quoting United States v. Mazurie, 419 U.S. 544, 550, 95 S.Ct. 710, 42 L.Ed.2d 706 (1975)). Therefore, we will address the alleged vagueness of § 3124.2 as it applies to this case.

Applied to appellee's conduct, the statute could not be clearer. In pertinent part, § 3124.2 provides, "[A] person who is an employee or agent of ... a county correctional authority ... commits a felony of the third degree when that person engages in sexual intercourse ... or indecent contact with an inmate[.]" 18 Pa.C.S. § 3124.2(a). The statute's plain language reveals the intent of the General Assembly: to prohibit sexual contact between correctional staff and inmates. It is sufficiently definite "that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited," Mikulan, at 1342, and is not "so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application[.]" Heinbaugh, at 246. The statute provides reasonable standards for correctional personnel to gauge their conduct—namely, sexual contact with inmates is forbidden. Whatever latent ambiguities may lurk in the terms "inmate" or "employee" are not implicated here. Appellee was a county corrections officer; she was unquestionably an "employee" of a county correctional facility. The persons with whom she allegedly had sexual contact were indisputably "inmates" at that facility. Appellee's alleged conduct is precisely what the General Assembly intended to proscribe when it enacted § 3124.2, which is not unconstitutionally vague.

II.

The trial court concluded § 3124.2 was unconstitutionally overbroad because it punishes conduct protected by the First Amendment.⁵ The court reasoned:

Voluntary sexual acts—deviate, adulterous, or otherwise, are protected by the First Amendment. The statute at issue punishes such acts of privacy. It punishes consensual sex between individuals who have minimal, or no, direct official contact with facility inmates. Under the statute, the perpetrator could be an office worker, a cleaning person, a cook, any sort of sub-contractor, or an off-duty employee or agent of one of the listed facilities who engages in off-site consensual sexual activity with an inmate on work release or furlough from their own, or another county.

Trial Court Opinion, 2/21/02, at 5. Appellee contends the court's hypothetical scenarios are relevant to overbreadth analysis because statutes implicating First Amendment rights are assessed not only as applied but also as to other potential situations. See NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 432, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1963) ("[I]n appraising a statute's inhibitory effect upon such [First Amendment] rights, this Court has not hesitated to take into account possible applications of the statute in other factual contexts besides that at bar."). Thus, a threshold matter is whether § 3124.2 proscribes conduct protected by the First Amendment.

Appellee urges § 3124.2 violates the rights of association and privacy. In support of this claim, she cites a number of United States Supreme Court decisions recognizing a constitutional right to privacy in limited circumstances—see, e.g., Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22...