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State Supreme Court upholds rulings on local cases
Following the court's decision in the cases, prosecutors can continue to apply a broad interpretation of the indecent liberties law and to use testimony about unprosecuted offenses to convince judges for tougher sentences.
“These last two (cases) are certainly good news,” County Attorney Jeani Stone said.
Indecent liberties law and videotaping
Donald Herbert Rabuck was charged with taking immodest, immoral or indecent liberties with two unnamed 17-year-old girls, one of whom was living in a house rented by Rabuck. The girls went to police in December 2003 after they stumbled on a small, wireless video camera secreted in their closet. Police later found videotapes of the girls dressing and undressing.
Rabuck entered a conditional plea of guilty to both charges while reserving the right to appeal the District Court's decision to throw out his pretrial motion to dismiss the case. He was sentenced to two years to five years in prison on each count, to be served concurrently, and fined $1,000 each.
However, he challenged the District Court's decision in the Supreme Court, arguing that the indecent liberties law is unconstitutional because it's too vague. The law wasn't specific enough to give him advance warning that his conduct was wrong, his lawyers told the court.
Prosecutors said the law should not be subject to challenge “by virtue of the fact that it is broad enough to capture even innovative forms of sexual imposition upon minors,” according to court documents.
The Supreme Court agreed with prosecutors and ruled Friday that the District Court's decision should stand.
“While video voyeurism may not have been contemplated when the indecent liberties statute was enacted, the statute was obviously drawn broadly to encompass a variety of behaviors from which children should be protected,” Justice E. James Burke wrote in the court's decision.
“We have no trouble concluding that the common sense of society could regard such acts as violative of the statute and that a person of ordinary intelligence had sufficient notice that such conduct would be against the law.”
Using unprosecuted crimes
Justices also looked at a case brought by Dale Evan Peden. Peden pleaded guilty to conspiracy to deliver methamphetamine as part of an agreement in which prosecutors agreed to drop a charge of methamphetamine possession with intent to deliver. But the parties did not agree on sentencing.
At sentencing, Sheriff's investigator Steve Hamilton told the court that Peden had agreed to buy an ounce each of cocaine and methamphetamine for a confidential informant in a separate case.
That offense went unprosecuted because Peden surrendered to South Dakota authorities and was unable to deliver the promised drugs. But prosecutors still used Hamilton's testimony to buttress their case for a tougher sentence. Subsequently, the judge sentenced Peden to seven years to 15 years in prison, a punishment nearly identical to prosecutors' recommendations.
Peden argued that the Hamilton's testimony wasn't reliable, in part because the informant didn't testify at the sentencing.
The justices disagreed, though. They ruled that Hamilton was close enough to the case to speak accurately about the events surrounding it and that objective facts corroborated his statements.
“The District Court did not abuse its discretion when it sentenced the appellant (Peden) and we, therefore, affirm,” Justice Barton R. Voigt wrote in the court's decision.
- By JAMES WARDEN, News-Record Writer
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