State v. MacGuire

• Citation: 2004 UT 4,84 P.3d 1171
• Decision Date: 23 January 2004
• Docket Number: No. 20020071.,20020071.
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Roger Martin MacGUIRE, Defendant and Petitioner.
• Court: Supreme Court of Utah

84 P.3d 1171

2004 UT 4

STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Roger Martin MacGUIRE, Defendant and Petitioner.

No. 20020071.

Supreme Court of Utah.

January 23, 2004.

Mark L. Shurtleff, Att'y Gen., J. Frederic Voros, Jr., Christopher D. Ballard, Asst. Att'ys Gen., William K. McGuire, Davis County Att'y, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff.

Scott L. Wiggins, Salt Lake City, for defendant.

DURRANT, Associate Chief Justice:

INTRODUCTION

¶ 1 Utah's criminal homicide statute provides that a person may be prosecuted for causing the death of an unborn child. This interlocutory appeal concerns (1) whether the term "unborn child" is unconstitutionally vague both on its face and as applied, and (2) whether the criminal homicide and aggravated murder statutes violate the federal and state guarantees of equal protection.

¶ 2 Defendant Roger Martin MacGuire has been charged with two counts of aggravated murder for allegedly killing his former wife and her unborn child. In a motion to dismiss Count I in part and Count II in its entirety, defendant contended he could not be prosecuted for killing the unborn child or be charged with aggravated murder based on that killing because Utah's criminal homicide and aggravated murder statutes are unconstitutional. The district court denied defendant's motion to dismiss and defendant petitioned for review of the interlocutory order. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶ 3 Defendant has been charged with the murder of his former wife, Susan C. MacGuire, and her unborn child. According to accounts presented at the preliminary hearing,¹ defendant learned, several days prior to the murder, that Ms. MacGuire was engaged and expecting a baby. He called his former father-in-law on January 14, 2001, to confirm the information. On the morning of January 15, 2001, defendant allegedly entered the insurance office where Ms. MacGuire worked and shot her four times.

¶ 4 One of the bullets entered Ms. MacGuire at the base of her neck and traveled through the occipital bone of the skull. A second bullet entered and exited her left forearm. A third bullet entered the side of her abdomen approximately at the waistline and pierced her abdominal wall and small intestine. A fourth bullet entered her abdomen and traveled through her uterus, lodging in the right wall of her pelvis.²

¶ 5 This fourth bullet lethally injured the unborn child Ms. MacGuire was carrying. It severed the umbilical cord and traveled through the placenta and unborn child itself before lodging in the pelvic wall. The medical examiner estimated that the gestational age of the unborn child was between thirteen and fifteen weeks at the time of death. Ms. MacGuire was life-flighted to a hospital where she died later that day.

¶ 6 Defendant has been charged with two counts of aggravated murder. Count I of the information charges defendant with aggravated murder for the death of Ms. MacGuire and alleges two aggravating circumstances; namely, (1) two persons were killed during the same criminal episode, and (2) the homicide was committed to retaliate against or prevent Ms. MacGuire from testifying, providing evidence, or participating in a legal proceeding or official investigation.³ Count II of the information charges defendant with aggravated murder for the death of the unborn child during a criminal episode in which two persons were killed.

¶ 7 Defendant filed a motion to dismiss the first aggravating factor in Count I and to dismiss Count II in its entirety on the basis that an unborn child is not a person under the aggravated murder statute, and the criminal homicide and aggravated murder statutes are unconstitutionally vague and violate equal protection guarantees. The district court denied defendant's motion, and defendant filed a petition for interlocutory appeal. We have jurisdiction pursuant to Utah Code Ann. section 78-2-2(3)(h) (2002).

ANALYSIS

I. STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶ 8 Whether the district court properly interpreted Utah's criminal homicide and aggravated murder statutes "is a question of law that we review for correctness." State v. Gomez, 2002 UT 120, ¶ 11, 63 P.3d 72. Likewise, "[w]hether a statute is constitutional is a question of law [that] we review for correctness, giving no deference to the trial court." State v. Daniels, 2002 UT 2, ¶ 30, 40 P.3d 611 (citing State v. Mohi, 901 P.2d 991, 995 (Utah 1995)). Moreover, "legislative enactments are presumed to be constitutional." Greenwood v. City of North Salt Lake, 817 P.2d 816, 819 (Utah 1991) (citations omitted). As a result, "those who challenge a statute ... as unconstitutional bear" a heavy "burden of demonstrating its unconstitutionality." Id. (citations omitted); accord Mohi, 901 P.2d at 1009 (Russon, J., concurring and dissenting)

(stating the burden of "challenging the constitutionality of a statute" is "a heavy one"); United States v. Nat'l Dairy Prods. Corp., 372 U.S. 29, 32, 83 S.Ct. 594, 9 L.Ed.2d 561 (1963) (noting that a "strong presumptive validity" attaches to legislative acts).

II. VAGUENESS CHALLENGE

¶ 9 Defendant challenges the criminal homicide and aggravated murder statutes of the Utah Code as being unconstitutionally vague both facially and as applied. The criminal homicide statute provides as follows:

(a) A person commits criminal homicide if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, with criminal negligence, or acting with a mental state otherwise specified in the statute defining the offense, causes the death of another human being, including an unborn child.

(b) There shall be no cause of action for criminal homicide for the death of an unborn child caused by an abortion.

Utah Code Ann. § 76-5-201(1) (1999) (emphasis added).

¶ 10 The aggravated murder statute provides, in relevant part, as follows:

(1) Criminal homicide constitutes aggravated murder if the actor intentionally or knowingly causes the death of another under any of the following circumstances:

....

(b) the homicide was committed incident to one act, scheme, course of conduct, or criminal episode during which two or more persons were killed ....

Id. § 76-5-202(1)(b) (emphasis added).

¶ 11 Defendant contends the term "unborn child" in the criminal homicide statute is unconstitutionally vague because the legislature failed to define the term and, absent that definition, it lacks a clear and specific meaning. Moreover, because "unborn child" is not defined, defendant contends the terms "another" and "persons" in the aggravated murder statute are also unconstitutionally vague because it is impossible to know when an unborn child achieves the status of a person. We disagree.

A. Void for Vagueness Doctrine

¶ 12 Where, as here, a statute "implicates no constitutionally protected conduct," a court will uphold a facial vagueness challenge "only if the [statute] is impermissibly vague in all of its applications." Village of Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 494-95, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982). A statute that is clear as applied to a particular complainant cannot be considered impermissibly vague in all of its applications and thus will necessarily survive a facial vagueness challenge. See id. at 495, 102 S.Ct. 1186 ("A plaintiff who engages in some conduct that is clearly proscribed cannot complain of the vagueness of the law as applied to the conduct of others.").

¶ 13 In order to establish that the complained-of provisions are impermissibly vague, a defendant must demonstrate either (1) that the statutes do not provide "the kind of notice that enables ordinary people to understand what conduct [is prohibited]," or (2) that the statutes "encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement." State v. Honie, 2002 UT 4, ¶ 31, 57 P.3d 977 (citing Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983)). Defendant has failed to establish that the statutes violate either test.

B. Notice that Conduct Is Prohibited

¶ 14 "Vagueness questions are essentially procedural due process issues, i.e., whether the statute adequately notices the proscribed conduct." State v. Frampton, 737 P.2d 183, 191-92 (Utah 1987) (citation omitted). If a statute "`is sufficiently explicit to inform the ordinary reader what conduct is prohibited,'" it is not unconstitutionally vague. Id. (quoting State v. Theobald, 645 P.2d 50, 51 (Utah 1982)). Here, defendant contends that the criminal homicide and aggravated murder statutes do not provide adequate notice about what type of conduct is prohibited because an ordinary person is left to guess at the meaning of the term "unborn child." Thus, defendant reasons, a person cannot "`steer between lawful and unlawful conduct.'" Village of Hoffman Estates,455 U.S. at 498,102 S.Ct. 1186 (quoting Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-09, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972)). We therefore must determine whether the term "unborn child" is sufficiently definite to provide adequate notice as to what conduct is proscribed.

1. Plain Meaning of "Unborn Child"

¶ 15 "In considering the meaning of a [statutory] provision, the analysis begins with the plain language of the provision.... We need not look beyond the plain language unless we find some ambiguity in it." Utah Sch. Bds. Ass'n v. State Bd. of Educ., 2001 UT 2, ¶ 13, 17 P.3d 1125 (citation omitted). Moreover, "[t]he plain language of a statute is to be read as a whole, and its provisions interpreted in harmony with other provisions in the same statute and with other statutes under the same and related chapters." Lyon v. Burton, 2000 UT 19, ¶ 17, 5 P.3d 616 (internal quotations and citations omitted).

¶ 16 In State v. Larsen, 578 P.2d 1280, 1281-82 (Utah 1978), we held that a person could not be convicted of automobile homicide for causing the death of a twenty-six-week-old fetus because a fetus was not specifically recognized in statute as a human being. In response to our decision, the legislature amended the criminal homicide statute⁴ to provide...