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Binkowski v. State6/24/1999
eir statutes and severing overbroad language. For instance, in State v. Miner, 556 N.W.2d 578 (Minn. Ct. App. 1996), Minnesota's intermediate appellate court held its hunter harassment statute constitutional on a facial challenge of overbreadth after construing the statute to eliminate the intent requirement "to dissuade" because it concluded the term was an invalid, content-based restriction on the exercise of First Amendment rights. Id. at 583. It explained the provision was invalid because it proscribed only speech or expressive conduct seeking to dissuade the taking of a wild animals. Ibid.; accord People v. Sanders, 696 N.E.2d 1144, 1148 (Ill. 1998) (excising "intent to dissuade" from Illinois' Hunter Interference Prohibition Act) ("Subjecting to criminal liability expression which is made with an intent to dissuade, while failing to threaten punishment for expressions intended to encourage or persuade, constitutes an illegal legislative censure of opinion."); but see State v. Lilburn, 875 P.2d 1036, 1040-41 (Mont. 1994) (holding Montana's hunter harassment statute constitutional on challenge of facial overbreadth after construing phrase "intent to dissuade" as content-neutral); cf. Dorman v. Satti, 862 F.2d 432 (2d Cir. 1988) (holding Connecticut's hunter harassment statute vague and overbroad because it "is not subject to curative construction"), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1099, 109 S. Ct. 2450, 104 L. Ed. 2d 1005 (1989); see also State v. Casey, 876 P.2d 138 (Idaho 1994) (holding Idaho's hunter harassment statute unconstitutionally overbroad because it impermissibly regulated the viewpoint of an anti-hunting advocate); Opinion of the Justices, 509 A.2d 749 (N.H. 1986) (stating that proposed hunter harassment bill was overbroad and therefore objectionable under the New Hampshire State constitution because "critical terms" of the bill were left undefined) (advisory opinion); State v. Bagley, 474 N.W.2d 761 (Wis. Ct. App. 1991) (holding Wisconsin's hunter harassment statute constitutional on facial overbreadth challenge).
New Jersey's Hunter Harassment Statute does not suffer the constitutional infirmities of the statutes criticized in Miner and Sanders. The Miner court determined that the words "intent to dissuade" were a content-based restriction on speech which could only be constitutional if it was necessary to serve a compelling state interest. 556 N.E.2d at 578. In contrast to the Minnesota statute, the New Jersey statute's intent requirement narrows its scope without implicating speech. Only conduct pursued with the general purpose of "hindering or preventing the lawful taking of wildlife" and the specific intent "to disturb, alarm, disrupt, or annoy a person lawfully taking wildlife," N.J.S.A. 23:7A-2g, is punishable. Thus, as the State maintains:
" ounds emanating from lawful activity such as walking through the woods, or the laughter of picknickers, or the slamming of a car door might scare away deer or 'disturb' a hunter but would not run afoul of the Hunter Interference law since these noises or actions would not -- at least not on their face -- be undertaken with the requisite intent needed to implicate the statutory prohibition."
We are satisfied that the statute is narrowly directed at preventing only the physical interference with hunting by those who have the purpose to interfere. By defining interference as a form of physical impediment, coupled with the general and specific intent requirements that solely implicate conduct, the statute is not an overbroad regulation of First Amendment rights.
III.
We turn next to the question of whether the statute is unconstitutionally vague. "To succeed [on a facial challenge of vagueness], ... the com
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