People v. Rice
| Citation | 363 N.E.2d 1371,395 N.Y.S.2d 626,41 N.Y.2d 1018 |
| Parties | , 363 N.E.2d 1371 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Michael RICE, Appellant. The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Charles MEHR, Appellant. |
| Decision Date | 26 April 1977 |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals |
Anna M. Perry, Northport, John F. Middlemiss, Jr., Riverhead, and Leon J. Kesner, Bay Shore, for appellant in the first above-entitled action.
E. Carrington Boggan, New York City, Alan J. Azzara, Bayville, and Bruce J. Ennis, New York City, for appellant in the second above-entitled action.
Henry F. O'Brien, Dist. Atty. (Denis R. Hurley, of counsel), for respondent in the first above-entitled action.
Henry F. O'Brien, Dist. Atty. (Kevin J. Crowley, of counsel), for respondent in the second above-entitled action.
In both of these cases novel and difficult constitutional questions in a field, largely unsettled, come to the court without a trial record and solely on the informations filed. Intermeshed are questions of conduct traditionally treated as criminal and yet, when committed privately and circumspectly, suggestive of an unwarranted interference by the State with the lately recognized and inchoate "penumbral" right of privacy (see, e. g., Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 484-485, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510; Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564-568, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542). The solution to these questions should not be determined in the bare outline of a criminal information, especially since divergencies of view, properly, may turn, among other things, on the different degrees of interference with privacy, or better, freedom of conduct, which may be tolerated in an organized society without infringing on a society's right to require conformance to standards which it believes essential to its survival or character. Resolution of these issues may, conceivably, make irrelevant the contentions of defendants that equal protection of the laws is involved.
In one of the cases, there is no specification at all of the place where the acts occurred or whether the two actors were the only ones present. In the other, the information tells us only that the acts occurred in some portion of a public toilet, not otherwise described, and without suggestion whether any others were present before the police burst in. None of these distinctions may turn out to be material. On the other hand, great constitutional issues, and they are present in these cases, should not be...
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