Territory Hawai`i v. Naumu

• Decision Date: 15 December 1958
• Docket Number: NO. 4067.,4067.
• Citation: 43 Haw. 66
• Parties: TERRITORY OF HAWAII v. DAVID NAUMU.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

43 Haw. 66

TERRITORY OF HAWAII

v.DAVID NAUMU.

NO. 4067.

Supreme Court of the Territory of Hawai‘i.

Submitted November 3, 1958.

Decided December 15, 1958.

POINTS OF LAW TO DISTRICT COURT OF HONOLULU, HON. HARRY STEINER, MAGISTRATE.

Syllabus by the Court

Vagueness in a statute may violate the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

A statute which gives adequate warning of what falls under its ban and provides a sufficient standard for its objective and impartial application meets the requirement of due process.

A statute which prohibits any game in which money or “anything of value” is lost or won is not so vague as to violate the due process clause.

Denial of equal justice by the application of a statute fair on its face in a discriminatory manner is within the prohibition of the Constitution.

Application of R.L.H. 1955, § 288–4, to pinball machine games in which free plays are awarded does not constitute discriminatory application of the statute.

Hyman M. Greenstein for defendant–appellant.

Frederick J. Titcomb, Assistant Public Prosecutor, City and County of Honolulu, for plaintiff–appellee.

RICE, C. J., STAINBACK AND MARUMOTO, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT BY MARUMOTO, J.

Appellant, David Naumu, was charged in the district court of Honolulu with conducting “a gambling game in which machines were used or in which something of value was won or lost to wit: free games on the pinball machines contrary to Section 11343 RLH/45.” He interposed a demurrer challenging the applicability of the facts alleged to the offense charged and the constitutionality of the statute as enacted and applied. The district magistrate overruled the demurrer. Thereupon, the parties submitted the case on an agreed statement of facts in which appellant admitted that at the time and place alleged in the charge he operated a pinball machine game in which free games were won or lost. The magistrate found appellant guilty and sentenced him to pay a fine of $25, suspended.

The case is before us on appeal from such judgment on points of law.

Appellant alleges that the magistrate erred in ruling:

(1) that the charge stated facts sufficient to constitute a violation of R.L.H. 1945, § 11343, now R.L.H. 1955, § 288–4;

(2) that R.L.H. 1955, § 288–4, is not invalid, defective, null and void, in violation of appellant's rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States in that the statute is vague, indefinite and uncertain; and

(3) that R.L.H. 1955, § 288–4, is not invalid, defective, null and void, in violation of appellant's property rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as applied in the case, to the operation of a pinball machine game wherein free plays or free re–plays may be awarded to a successful player.

The statute in question provides for the punishment of every person found guilty of conducting any game in which money or “anything of value” is lost or won. In Territory v. Uyehara, 42 Haw. 184, we held that free games won on a pinball machine came within the meaning of “anything of value” as used in the statute.

We see no merit in the first error alleged by appellant. The question raised therein is identical with the question considered and decided in the Uyehara case.

With reference to the second alleged error, appellant's contention is that the phrase “anything of value” in R.L.H. 1955, § 288–4, is too vague, indefinite and uncertain to withstand the strict construction due a penal statute.

A statute may be so vague as to violate the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. In Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U. S. 385, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed an interlocutory decree of the district court enjoining the enforcement of a statute containing the phrase “current rate of per diem wages in the locality where the work is performed.” In doing so, the court made the oft–quoted statement that “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.”

However, actually the court has required less definiteness than is indicated in the foregoing statement in the Connally case. This fact is recognized in the following further statement in that very case:

“The question whether given legislative enactments have been thus wanting in certainty has frequently been before this court. In some of the cases the statutes involved were upheld; in others, declared invalid. The precise point of differentiation in some instances is not easy of statement. But it will be enough for present purposes to say generally that the decisions of the court upholding statutes as sufficiently certain, rested upon the conclusion that they employed words or phrases having a technical or other special meaning, well enough known to enable those within their reach to correctly apply them, Hygrade Provision Co. v. Sherman, 266 U. S. 497, 502; Omaechevarria v. Idaho, 246 U. S. 343, 348, or a well–settled common law meaning, notwithstanding an element of degree in the definition as to which estimates might differ, Nash v. United States, 229 U. S. 373, 376; International Harvester Co. v. Kentucky, , or, as broadly stated by Mr. Chief Justice White in United States v. Cohen Grocery Co., 255 U. S. 81, 92, ‘that, for reasons found to result either from the text of the statutes involved or the subjects with which they dealt, a standard of some sort was afforded.’ ”

In United States v. Petrillo, 332 U. S. 1, the court upheld the validity of a section of the Communications Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 1064, 1102, as amended, which provided for the punishment of any person attempting to...