State v. Lawrence
| Decision Date | 11 April 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 5710-PR,5710-PR |
| Citation | 135 Ariz. 569,663 P.2d 561 |
| Parties | STATE of Arizona, Appellee, v. Sally Catherine LAWRENCE, Appellant. |
| Court | Arizona Supreme Court |
Robert K. Corbin, Atty. Gen. by William J. Schafer, III, and Diane M. Ramsey, Asst. Attys. Gen., Phoenix, for appellee.
Feder Law Office, P.A. by Bruce Feder, Phoenix, for appellant.
After a jury trial in Maricopa County Superior Court, Sally Catherine Lawrence was convicted of one count of unlawful imprisonment and sentenced to three months incarceration at the Maricopa County Jail. 1 The Court of Appeals reversed appellant Lawrence's conviction in an opinion filed September 23, 1982 and the State of Arizona filed a timely petition for review after the Court of Appeals denied the state's motion for rehearing.
We accepted jurisdiction of this matter pursuant to A.R.S. § 12-120.24 and Rule 31.19, Rules of Criminal Procedure, 17 A.R.S., because we believe that this case requires us to construe A.R.S. § 13-1303, the statute under which Lawrence was prosecuted and convicted. We reverse appellant's conviction of unlawful imprisonment, but we vacate the opinion of the Court of Appeals. Although the ultimate result is the same, our analysis of the unlawful imprisonment statute differs from the view expressed by the majority of the Court of Appeals.
This court agrees with the Court of Appeals' statement that the issue before us is whether Arizona's penal provisions establishing the crime of unlawful imprisonment may be applied to the factual circumstances of this case where the accused, the victim's custodial parent, confined her four-year-old daughter overnight in a rented storage locker. We hold that A.R.S. § 13-1303 cannot be so applied.
Before explaining our reasoning, we feel compelled to announce our agreement with the Court of Appeals that the circumstances in which this victim found herself were unfortunate and that the actions, or inaction, of the adult responsible for her plight "... might well be characterized as reprehensible...." 2 Nevertheless, appropriate criminal sanctions are provided in Title 13, Arizona Revised Statutes, outside of § 13-1303. This court believes that parents, legal guardians and prosecutors are, and should be, aware of these penalties. Recognition and utilization of the wisdom found in our criminal code can protect the children of our state without imposing a conviction which the legislature did not intend.
The facts of this case are these. The victim was discovered in the storage locker in Tempe, Arizona at approximately 7:00 one morning when the manager of the storage yard noticed that a locker adjacent to the one rented by appellant was not properly secured. Upon investigating, she heard a child's voice coming from inside the next locker, asking that the door be opened. After the lock was removed, appellant's four-year-old daughter, Sommer Lawrence, was found inside the crowded five-by-fifteen-foot locker seated on rags, covered with a blanket and with her jacket nearby. The locker had a foul smell due to the presence of decaying plants and a potty chair with excrement in it. No one could have had access to the locker since 9:00 p.m. the previous day when the fenced locker area had been secured for the night.
The child told the manager and an investigating officer first, that a man named Dave, and then that her mother had put her in the locker. She was dirty and unkempt but was not ill and there was no evidence of physical impairment or injury. At about 8:30 p.m. on the day the child was discovered, appellant came to the storage locker complex looking for her daughter.
At trial, Lawrence's defense relied on the statement she gave to police when she first inquired about her daughter at the locker complex. This statement came in through the state's witnesses and Lawrence rested without presenting any evidence. Briefly, appellant's version of events was that she had gone to the storage lockers on the previous evening with two friends, Mike and Bob, to rearrange the locker's contents. Mike and Bob had agreed to keep Sommer with them when Lawrence left to run some errands, and it must have been their inattention, according to appellant, which resulted in Sommer's being shut up inside the storage locker. There is some indication from appellant's discussion with the investigating officers, that Lawrence was unsure when she had last seen the child. She did not know where Mike and Bob lived.
During closing argument the state argued that, since it appeared appellant had all her possessions in the storage locker including a potty chair for her daughter, it would not be unreasonable to believe that appellant and her daughter were using the locker as their only residence.
Arizona's unlawful imprisonment statute defines the offense in one sentence: "A person commits unlawful imprisonment by knowingly restraining another person." A.R.S. § 13-1303(A).
The word "restrain," as used in § 13-1303(A), is defined in A.R.S. § 13-1301(2). Under that definition, there must be a showing that the defendant has restricted the victim's movement in a manner which substantially interferes with that person's liberty. The restraint can be imposed by either moving the victim from one place to another or by confining the victim. Additionally, the restraint must be done without consent and without legal authority. 3
The record in this case makes it clear that the victim experienced a substantial interference with her liberty and, thus, a restriction of her movement by confinement. However, A.R.S. § 13-1301(2) makes it clear that the restraint which § 13-1303 proscribes is one accomplished without consent and without legal authority.
We believe, as did Judge Froeb in his special concurrence with the Court of Appeals majority, that the legislative intent in using the phrase "without legal authority" was to render A.R.S. § 13-1303 inapplicable to the facts at bar because of the defendant's status with respect to the victim. 4 The following language from that special concurrence expresses our view and we adopt it:
State v. Lawrence, supra, at 585-586.
Our analysis is based, as was Judge Froeb's, on the plain wording of A.R.S. §§ 13-1301(2) and 13-1303. A further indication of the legislature's intent is found in A.R.S. § 13-1303(B)(1) and (2) which provide defenses for law officers performing their duty and for relatives who act to assume lawful custody. The legislature's failure to provide a defense for actions undertaken to exercise custody rights indicates to this court that A.R.S. § 13-1303(A) does not apply to such conduct since it is patent that no defense is necessary for individuals who are not exposed to prosecution under that statute.
Finally, we cannot believe our legislature intended to condemn a parent's confinement of his or her child in their only residence (as the state argued to the jury) as felonious unlawful imprisonment regardless of how ill-advised the confinement or how unfit the residence.
Accordingly, we hold that it was error for the trial court to deny defendant's motion to dismiss urging the inapplicability of this statute to these facts, and we remand to the trial court for the entry of an order dismissing Count I of the information.
Because I disagree that a parent is immune from prosecution for unreasonably confining his or her child, I...
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State v. Teynor
...We conclude that a parent may commit the offense of false imprisonment against the parent's child. Teynor cites State v. Lawrence, 135 Ariz. 569, 663 P.2d 561 (1983), where it was held that a mother who confined her four-year-old daughter in a foot locker for an extended period could not be......
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State v. Siemer
...a mother who locked her four-year-old daughter overnight in a storage locker which served as their "home." See State v. Lawrence, 135 Ariz. 569, 663 P.2d 561 (1983). In Lawrence, the Arizona court held that the phrase "without legal authority" rendered the false imprisonment statute inappli......
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State v. Viramontes
...restriction of a person's movements with lack of consent and lack of legal authority. A.R.S. § 13-1301(2). Relying on State v. Lawrence, 135 Ariz. 569, 663 P.2d 561 (1983), the court of appeals found that because defendant was the child's father, the state could not establish an absence of ......
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...courts have previously immunized parents from criminal prosecution for false imprisonment of their children, (State v. Lawrence (1983) 135 Ariz. 569, 571, 663 P.2d 561; State v. Badalich (Fla.App.1985) 479 So.2d 197, 199), the recent trend in both jurisdictions is to allow prosecution of pa......