State v. Falcone

• Decision Date: 27 July 2006
• Citation: 902 A.2d 141,2006 ME 90
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Michael FALCONE and State of Maine v. James Jannetti.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 141

902 A.2d 141

2006 ME 90

STATE of Maine v. Michael FALCONE and State of Maine v. James Jannetti.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: January 25, 2006.

Decided: July 27, 2006.

G. Steven Rowe, Atty. Gen., William Baghdoyan, Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), Augusta, for the State.

Thimi Mina (orally), McCloskey, Mina & Cunniff, L.L.C., Portland, for the Defendants.

Jonathan A. Block, Pierce Atwood, Portland, for Amicus Curiae.

Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and CLIFFORD, DANA, ALEXANDER, CALKINS, LEVY, and SILVER, JJ.

Majority: CLIFFORD, ALEXANDER, CALKINS, LEVY, and SILVER, JJ.

Dissent: SAUFLEY, C.J., and DANA, and SILVER, JJ.

Dissent: DANA, J.

ALEXANDER, J.

[¶ 1] The State appeals from a judgment entered in the Superior Court (Cumberland County, Cole, J.) dismissing indictments against Michael Falcone and James Jannetti after determining that 36 M.R.S. § 5102(5)(A) (2005)¹ is unconstitutionally vague. Falcone and Jannetti were indicted on charges of evasion of income tax and failure to make and file Maine income tax returns. The State argues that the court erred in finding that the statute was unconstitutionally vague. We agree and vacate the judgment.

I. CASE HISTORY

[¶ 2] Falcone and Jannetti are merchant mariners who graduated from the Maine Maritime Academy. Both defendants were indicted on six counts of evasion of income tax (Class C), 36 M.R.S. § 184-A (2005), and six counts of failure to make and file Maine income tax returns (Class D), 36 M.R.S. § 5332 (2005), for the tax years 1997 to 2002.

[¶ 3] After indictment, the defendants filed a number of motions, including a motion to dismiss pursuant to M.R.Crim. P. 12(b)(1), arguing that section 5102(5)(A) is unconstitutionally vague. The cases were consolidated for hearing on these motions.

[¶ 4] At the hearing, counsel for the defendants stated that the sole issue for the trial court was "whether the prosecutions based on the undefined term `domicile' violate the due process clause and equal protection provisions of the United States and Maine Constitutions." The briefing and oral argument largely focused on whether the term "domiciled" was adequately defined. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss, finding that the term "domiciled" in section 5102(5)(A) "was not adequately defined in the Maine tax code," and that the term was unconstitutionally vague. This appeal followed.

II. DISCUSSION

[¶ 5] Review of a facial challenge to a Maine statute based on its constitutionality is de novo. State v. Burby, 2003 ME 95, ¶ 4, 828 A.2d 796, 798. "A statute is presumed to be constitutional and the person challenging the constitutionality has the burden of establishing its infirmity." Kenny v. Dep't of Human Servs., 1999 ME 158, ¶ 7, 740 A.2d 560, 563. We "consider the whole statutory scheme for which the section at issue forms a part so that a harmonious result, presumably the intent of the Legislature, may be achieved." State v. White, 2001 ME 65, ¶ 4, 769 A.2d 827, 828-29.

[¶ 6] To find a statute unconstitutionally vague, we must find that the statute "fails to 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." State v. McLaughlin, 2002 ME 55, ¶ 9, 794 A.2d 69, 72 (quotation marks omitted).

[¶ 7] Title 36 M.R.S. § 5102(5) (2005), in the definitions section of the income tax portion of the Maine Revised Statutes, states:

Resident individual. "Resident individual" means an individual:

A. Who is domiciled in Maine;

B. Who is not domiciled in Maine, but maintains a permanent place of abode in this State and spends in the aggregate more than 183 days of the taxable year in this State, unless he is in the Armed Forces of the United States.²

[¶ 8] The vagueness issue involves the term "domiciled" in subparagraph (A). The parties agree that subparagraph (B) does not apply to this case.

[¶ 9] Although it may be a "somewhat elusive concept," the concise and consistent rule is: "Domicile has two components: residence and the intent to remain." Margani v. Sanders, 453 A.2d 501, 503 (Me.1982); see also Poirier v. City of Saco, 529 A.2d 329, 330 (Me.1987) ("We have defined domicile as `a place where a person lives or has his home, to which, when absent, he intends to return and from which he has no present purpose to depart.'") (quoting Belanger v. Belanger, 240 A.2d 743, 746 (Me.1968)). The term "domicile" has long been in use by this Court to identify significant legal rights and responsibilities. See, e.g., Gilmartin v. Emery, 131 Me. 236, 239-42, 160 A. 874 (1932); Gilman v. Gilman, 52 Me. 165, 172-77 (1863) ("Residence, being a visible fact, is not usually in doubt. The intention to remain is not so easily proved. Both must concur in order to establish a domicile."); Inhabitants of Exeter v. Inhabitants of Brighton, 15 Me. 58, 60-61 (1838).

[¶ 10] Domicile is used in other areas of the law and in many titles in the Maine Revised Statutes, and has been consistently defined and applied. See, e.g., Margani, 453 A.2d at 503-04.³ Where the meaning of a term can be adequately determined by examining the plain language definition or the common law definition, a challenge under the sufficient definiteness prong of a due process/vagueness claim will fail. See State v. Flint H., 544 A.2d 739, 742 (Me.1988). Although we might conceive of circumstances under which the common law definition's lack of specificity may render it unconstitutional as applied, that possibility does not justify the invalidation of the statute as unconstitutional on its face. See Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 183, 111 S.Ct. 1759, 114 L.Ed.2d 233 (1991) (stating that "[t]he fact that [the law] might operate unconstitutionally under some conceivable circumstances is insufficient to render [it] wholly invalid").

[¶ 11] Read in the context of the tax code and two centuries of usage, the term "domiciled" is not unconstitutionally vague.⁴

The entry is:

Judgment vacated. Remanded to the Superior Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

SILVER, J., with whom, SAUFLEY, C.J., and DANA, J., join, dissenting.

[¶ 12] I respectfully dissent from the majority's determination that the term "domicile," 36 M.R.S. § 5102(5)(A) (2005), is not unconstitutionally vague when it is read within the context of the tax code and when considering its nearly two centuries of use in our jurisprudence. Because I believe that the term "domicile" is inadequately defined, leaving people "of common intelligence [to] necessarily guess at its meaning," State v. Reed, 345 A.2d 891, 894 (Me.1975) (quotation marks omitted), I would find that basing criminal sanctions on section 5102(5)(A) violates the defendants' right to due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, section 6-A of the Maine Constitution.

[¶ 13] It is an essential element of due process that crimes be defined with definiteness. Knowlton v. State, 257 A.2d 409, 409 (Me.1969). The bedrock principle underlying this truism "is that all are entitled to be informed as to what the state commands or forbids and no one should be required, at peril of life, liberty, or property, to speculate as to the meaning of penal statutes." Id. at 410 (quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, we have struck down on vagueness grounds a defendant's condition of probation that required him to "cooperate fully to the satisfaction of the probation officer" because the defendant, without knowledge of "the specific nature of the requisite cooperation," could not know which behaviors would lead to the violation of the provision and thus to a "loss of his conditional liberty." State v. Cote, 539 A.2d 628, 628-29 (Me.1988); see also State v. Aucoin, 278 A.2d 395, 396 (Me.1971) (declaring a city ordinance prohibiting "loitering" to be unconstitutionally vague because use of the undefined prohibition "as a criterion of criminal conduct, provides an `incomprehensible standard' ... to delimit a class of human behavior which shall be the subject of punishment"); Reed, 345 A.2d at 893-94.

[¶ 14] Here, the parameters of the defendants' required conduct are equally ill-defined. "Resident individuals" of Maine are required to file Maine income tax returns. 36 M.R.S. § 5220(1) (2005). A "resident individual" is defined as either an individual "[w]ho is domiciled in Maine," 36 M.R.S. § 5102(5)(A), or an individual "[w]ho is not domiciled in Maine, but maintains a permanent place of abode in this State and spends in the aggregate more than 183 days of the taxable year in this State," id. § 5102(5)(B) (2005). As the Court has pointed out, what it means to be "domiciled" in Maine is not defined in the tax code. See State v. Greenleaf, 2004 ME 149, ¶ 34, 863 A.2d 877, 885 ("All of the relevant terms [of 36 M.R.S. §§ 5102, 5220, 5330 (2005)] are adequately defined within the tax code, except for the term domicile."); Op. Me. Att'y Gen. 30-38 (Feb. 15, 1980) (recognizing that "Title 36 contains no definition of either domiciliary or domicile").

[¶ 15] Unlike the majority, I believe that domicile has not been sufficiently defined by our jurisprudence to insulate it from constitutional infirmity. See State v. Flint H., 544 A.2d 739, 742 (Me.1988) (holding that the numerous cases interpreting "aiding and abetting" helped to save it from unconstitutional vagueness). We ostensibly defined domicile in a 1982 paternity case. See Margani v. Sanders, 453 A.2d 501, 503 (Me.1982). At issue in Margani was the District Court's jurisdiction over the defendant, which required an examination of whether he was a "domiciliary of the State of Maine," triggering the court's personal jurisdiction over him. Id. Before setting forth the definition of domicile, we began an examination of the term by noting that domicile is a "somewhat elusive concept which is often confused with...