\u201cHe got off on a technicality.\u201d This is a quip that drives me crazy whenever someone walks away from a courtroom in which the person otherwise should have been found guilty. Just what is a technicality?<\/p>\n
A technicality can be the absence of a comma, a misplaced comma, or any other piece of punctuation that makes a statute mean something different from what legislators intended. It can be that law enforcement or prosecutors violated a fundamental constitutional right. Or, it can mean that a procedural error existed; such as not following a specific provision of the Rules of Evidence, the Rules or Criminal Procedure, or any other aspect of the judicial system. This essay is going to focus on another \u201cFlaw in the Law\u201d, the plain language of a statute as interpreted by a court.<\/p>\n
This issue was the object of an article in the Justice Reform Consortium newsletter of a year ago. During the 2018 legislative session, Rep. Mary Wolfe<\/a> (@RepMaryWolfe<\/em>) tweeted that \u201cSF 2230<\/a> enhances the penalty for kidnapping a minor from Class \u201cC\u201d (10 years) to Class \u201cB\u201d (25 years) UNLESS kidnapper is a parent \u2013 not a parent of the kidnapped minor, just a parent \u2013 whose sole purpose is to assume custody of the minor \u2013 not legal custody, just custody.\u00a0 After explaining this to the members of the Iowa House of Representatives, the bill passed 82-16.\u201d\u00a0 Words do matter.\u00a0 See for yourself.<\/p>\n The Iowa Code now contains the following language:<\/p>\n 710.3<\/strong> Kidnapping<\/strong> in<\/strong> the<\/strong> second<\/strong> degree.<\/strong><\/p>\n That word \u201ca\u201d is going to come back and haunt someone. A smart attorney is going to get a defendant off on a technicality someday when the kidnapper is \u201ca\u201d parent (or \u201ca\u201d legal guardian), but not the parent of the child kidnapped.<\/p>\n You may, or a prosecutor may, argue \u2018til the sun goes down that the Iowa Legislature didn\u2019t mean what it enacted, but that it meant<\/em> the exception applied to \u201cthe\u201d parent of \u201cthe\u201d child. It shouldn\u2019t make any difference what the legislators meant<\/em>, the Court is going to determine the outcome on what the statute says in viewing the language on statutory construction. Based on a 2004 Iowa Supreme Court case, Auen v. Alcoholic Beverages Div<\/em>., 679 NW 2d 586 (Iowa 2004), \u201c[t]he goal of statutory construction is to determine legislative intent.\u201d The Court determines \u201clegislative intent from the words chosen by the legislature, not what it should or might have said.. . . . Under the guise of construction, an interpreting body may not extend, enlarge or otherwise change the meaning of a statute.\u201d Auen at 590 (Citations omitted.)<\/p>\n Representatives Mary Lynn Wolfe<\/a> (D-Clinton) and Rick Olson<\/a> (D-Des Moines) attempted to amend the bill in order to make it more precise in its meaning. However, the \u201ctechnicality\u201d remained in the bill because of a powerful virtue \u2013 control! Many technicalities are the result of a political party\u2019s control over a piece of legislation. Rep. Olson\u2019s amendment would have fixed the bill\u2019s defect, and would have included a limited number of specified family members (besides \u201cthe child\u2019s\u201d parent) that would have been exempted from the wide scope of the bill\u2019s terms.\u00a0 As he mentioned during debate: \u201cThis is a common sense amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the floor manager of the bill, Rep. Ross Paustian<\/a> (R- Walcott), said that Rep. Olson\u2019s amendment \u201cwaters down the bill\u201d.\u00a0 Actually, refusal to amend the senate file opened up the flood gates.<\/p>\n Rep. Paustian\u2019s opening statement appeared to be a word-for-word description prepared by the Iowa County Attorneys Association (ICAA).\u00a0 It was the same explanation heard during a subcommittee meeting.<\/p>\n It\u2019s bad enough that 82 representatives would cast a vote in support of this defective bill, but all 50 senators voted to pass it.\u00a0 Does no one in the Senate pay attention to the \u201cplain language\u201d of legislation?\u00a0 We\u2019ll be honest.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t recognize the serious flaw until we noticed Rep. Mary Wolfe\u2019s tweet.<\/p>\n How can a legislator vote in favor of a bill that is obviously flawed?\u00a0 Were legislators not listening to the debate?\u00a0 Surely, it was brought up in caucus.\u00a0 How can an association made up of lawyers, the Iowa County Attorneys Association, insist that the bill NOT be modified, even though it cannot be enforced as written?<\/p>\n Someday, a person who kidnaps a child, \u201cwhose sole purpose of the kidnapping is to assume custody of\u201d the child, will walk away from a courtroom because the person is \u201ca\u201d parent, although not \u201cthe\u201d parent of the child who was kidnapped, and people will gasp at the thought of the monster walking the streets, freely. The media will tell you that he was found \u201cnot guilty\u201d because of a technicality; the legislators will blame the courts; the ICAA will deny it had anything to do with it, but will assure everyone that it can fix it; and you might say, \u201cI read about that once, but can\u2019t remember where.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cHe got off on a technicality.\u201d This is a quip that drives me crazy whenever someone walks away from a courtroom in which the person otherwise should have been found guilty. Just what is a technicality? A technicality can be … Continue reading \n