People v. MadrigalPeople v. Madrigal
delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.
Chief Justice Kilbride and Justices Freeman, Gar-man, Karmeier, Burke, and Theis concurred in
OPINION
Defendant, Claudia Madrigal, was indicted in the circuit court of Kane County on one count of identity theft in violation of section 16G — 15(a)(7) of the Identity Theft Law (
Defendant filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, seeking dismissal on three separate due process grounds. First, defendant maintained that
After a hearing on the motion to dismiss the indictment, the circuit court denied the first two grounds for dismissal. But it granted the motion to dismiss on the third ground, finding that the statutory subsection at issue lacks a culpable mental state and captures innocent conduct, thus violating due process. The trial court later entered an order under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 18 (Ill. S. Ct. R. 18 (eff. Sept. 1, 2006)), indicating that
ANALYSIS
We begin by noting that the question of whether a statute is unconstitutional is a question of law, which this court reviews de novo. People v. Johnson,
Accordingly, we must first determine the statute’s purpose in order to assess whether the prohibitions contained in
The legislative declaration in section 16G — 5(a) of the Identity Theft Law states that it is the “public policy of this
Crucial to defendant’s argument that
Simply put, this court has held that in such cases, a statute fails the rational basis test because it does not represent a reasonable method of preventing the targeted conduct. See Carpenter,
In Wright, we considered the constitutionality of an automobile record-keeping statute designed to prevent the transfer or sale of stolen motor vehicles (see
In the present case,
“(a) A person commits the offense of identity theft when he or she knowingly:
(1) uses any personal identifying information or personal identification document of another person to fraudulently obtain credit, money, goods, services, or other property, or
(2) uses any personal identifying information or personal identification document of another with intent to commit any felony theft or other felony violation of State law not set forth in paragraph (1) of this subsection (a), or
(3) obtains, records, possesses, sells, transfers, purchases, or manufactures any personal identification information or personal idеntification document of another with intent to commit or to aid or abet another in committing any felony theft or other felony violation of State law, or
(4) uses, obtains, records, possesses, sells, transfers, purchases, or manufactures any personal identification information or personal identification document of another knowing that such personal identification information or personal information documents were stolen or produced without lawful authority, or
(5) uses, transfers, or possesses document-making imрlements to produce false identification or false documents with knowledge that they will be used by the person or another to commit any felony theft or other felony violation of State law, or
(6) uses any personal identification information or personal identification document of another to portray himself or herself as that person, or otherwise, for the purpose of gaining access to any personal identification information or personal identification document of that person, without thе prior express permission of that person, or
(7) uses any personal identification information or personal identification document of another for the purpose of gaining access to any record of the actions taken, communications made or received, or other activities or transactions of that person, without the prior express permission of that person(Emphasis added.)
All seven of the subparagraphs in
The net result is that
The Identity Theft Law does contain some narrow exemptions that do not appear
The problem with
The State argued before the circuit court that identity theft itself is less likely to occur if the sort of information banned by
Bunis is particularly instructive. There, New York’s highest court invalidated a state law that prohibited the sale of magazines аnd other publications without covers, regardless of the circumstances. The court noted that “[w]hat was wrongful [was] not the sale of coverless magazines, but rather their sale by a vendor who takes part in a scheme to defraud a magazine publisher.” Bunis,
“Admittedly, by denominating as criminal all sales, [the statute] necessarily tends to prevent corrupt sales. But, even were we to suppose that it had power to prohibit such corrupt sales, it is unreasonable and beyond the legitimateexercise of the police powеr for the Legislature to interdict all sales, permissible and illicit alike, in order to prevent those which are illicit. The Legislature may not validly make it a crime to do something which is innocent in itself merely because it is sometimes done improperly, sometimes attended by improper motives or done as part of an illegal scheme.” Bunis, 172 N.E.2d at 274 .
Similarly, we find that a statute, such as
To avoid the constitutional problem, the State suggests that this court read a culpable mental state into the statute so that a criminal purpose is required for a violation. This court rejected the same argument in Wright and Carpenter under similar circumstances, with both courts holding that where a statute already cоntains a mental state of mere knowledge, this court cannot read a criminal-purpose requirement into the statute. Carpenter,
Carpenter relied upon Wright to find that if a statute already contains one or more mental states and none of them provide culpability, a court may not add a culpable mental state. Carpenter,
Similarly, the State’s reliance upon People v. Williams,
Finally, the State argues that we should abandon the Carpenter-Wick line of precedent and its requirement that statutes contain a culpable mental state to avoid punishing wholly innocent conduct. The State claims that we should abandon our precedent because it is at odds with the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of substantive due process under the federal constitution. The State’s claim that there is a divergence in our jurisprudence from that of the United States Supreme Court in this area is not correct.
In support of its argument, the State relies upon United States v. Salerno,
“A facial challenge to a legislative Act is, of course, the most difficult challenge to mount successfully, since the challenger must establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the Act would be valid. The fact that the [statute] might operate unconstitutionally under some conceivable set of circumstances is insufficient to render it wholly invalid ***.” Salerno,481 U.S. at 745 .
The State also relies upon the proposition that a “ Taw need not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional[;] [i]t is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might bе thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it.’ ” United States v. Comstock,
The case law relied upon by the State informs our constitutional analysis, but ultimately is not controlling of the outcome of the present case because none of the State’s cases involved a penal statute that lacked a culpable mental state and thereby criminalized a significant amount of innocent conduct. Rather, the principles noted here by the State were used as general
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we find no solid reason to depart from our precedent in Carpenter, Wright, K.C., Zaremba, and Wick. Applying that precedent to this case, we conclude that defendant met her burden of showing that
We therefore affirm the judgment of the circuit court of Kane County, which found
Affirmed.