IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF RIDGEWAY
IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF RIDGEWAY
STATE OF RIDGEWAY
Prosecution,
v.
MANDATORYMORALE,
Defendant.
___________________________/
CRIMINAL DIVISION
CASE NO.: 04-2024-CV-002454-F018
JUDGE: HON. SITEOWNER
RULING ON MOTION TO DISMISS
I. INTRODUCTION
In violating activity policy, the Ridgeway National Guard proceeded with a general
discharge against mandatorymorale (hereinafter “defendant”). On March 5th, the National Guard
attempted to go through a search of the defendant and his possessions in compliance with
National Guard policy. The defendant is then alleged to have “intentionally[] and knowingly
hindered” the search proceedings. See Count One, True Bill of Indictment Cause No. 24-221.
Because of this alleged hindrance, the State convened the Grand Jury to review the defendant’s
activities, which resulted in the Grand Jury returning a true bill of indictment on two counts.
The proceedings of this case were convened on March 12th, 2024, and this case was
originally assigned to Chief Judge koala4life. The Chief Judge recused upon request by the
defendant, and because no other judge of the Superior Court was able to hear the case without
conflict of interest, the Supreme Court sent a justice to visit the Superior Court to hear this case.
The defendant was arraigned on March 12th, 2024 in which the defendant entered a plea
of not guilty to both charges on the indictment. On March 15th, 2024 the defendant moved to
dismiss both counts of the indictment. The government objected to the dismissal of the
indictment and responded on March 18th, 2024.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
Both parties failed to correctly plead to the standard of review this court should use when
attempting to decide whether this case ought to be dismissed. The defendants highlighted a
provision under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The court rejects the use of the Federal
Rules of Criminal Procedure when attempting to evaluate our proceedings.
The defendants are correct that our judiciary does use precedent to guide our actions
when there are identical clauses of law. The problem, however, is the defendants are not
attempting to get this court to follow the beaten path of reviewing a piece of identical text, but
instead are trying to manufacture a new piece of text. Precedents involving rules are only to be
incorporated when they are the same in both form and function to a rule of our jurisdiction.
Oftentimes though, this type of overzealous incorporation of the rules can be forgiven because
the procedural rules are often based on well-established common-law surrounding the subject.
This is not to say that the underlying assertions by the defendant are wrong, they are just using
the wrong equation to get to this result.
To establish our standard of review, we will apply precedent from the jurisdiction in
which our rules originated - Massachusetts. See Arthur_Chen v. DevMix RSC-CV-2157 (2024)
(holding that the Rules of Civil Procedure are based on Massachusetts and precedent may be
used to apply them) Our application of these rules needs to be careful because the precedent
about some provisions of their rules is derived not out of the common law or their/our rules, but
through statutory law passed in the State of Massachusetts. An indictment is sufficient to state a
crime if it contains "'an appropriate legal term descriptive' of the criminal act" See
Commonwealth v. Green, 399 Mass. 565, 566 (1987). Furthermore, “[a]n indictment shall not be
dismissed or be considered defective or insufficient . . . for lack of any description or information
which might be obtained by requiring a bill of particulars.” Commonwealth v. Buckley, 76 Mass.
App. Ct. 123, 129 (2010), quoting from Commonwealth v. Gonzalez, 22 Mass. App. Ct. 274, 284
(1986). Finally, “A complaint or indictment will not be dismissed … ‘if the offense is charged
with sufficient clarity to show a violation of law[.]” Commonwealth v. Canty, 466 Mass. 535, 547
(2013).
III. ANALYSIS
A
The first count of the indictment charges the defendant with obstructing justice. For the
State to convict the defendant of obstruction, they must prove two things: 1) that the defendant
interfered with a process of justice, and 2) such interference hindered a law enforcement officer
from performing their duties. The government successfully pleads that the defendant has
interfered with some process, and identifies the exit-search proceeding as the process of justice
being interfered with. It becomes unclear as to whether an exit-search proceeding falls within the
legal boundaries of what a process of justice is. Our obstruction of justice statute has been solely
applied to interference with the criminal process. In an attempt to form the shape of what
obstruction is, the defendants again use federal precedent. This court, however, rejects the use of
the federal construction. Under Federal law, obstruction lives as an entire chapter of Title 18 of
the United States Code. Our law, however, only dedicates a single sentence to the matter. Our
statute is not descriptive but instead is an implicit catch-all for malicious and corrupt behavior
when connected to a “process of justice.” The government is less helpful than the defendant
when attempting to construct what the “process of justice” truly is. The government asserts that
“there exists cause in order to have legal justification for completion of the search, and any
hindrance of such search would constitute as obstructing justice[.]” The government mixes up
the legal cause to execute an exit search with what we ought to define as a justice process. The
government correctly states that the defendant’s definition is flawed but make no attempt to
substitute in their own definition of which their indictment satisfies. There is no parallel that we
can pull from to give guidance as to how to define this. Therefore, the duty of defining this
element falls onto this court.
The first few laws which were carryovers of Ridgeway County were not written by
lawyers with an understanding of the verbosity required to have laws properly examined by
courts. Perhaps, it would be easier to just imagine a group of Neanderthals standing around an
open fire compounding words from Webster’s Law Dictionary. We are still, however, bound by
the original intent these Neanderthals had when they carved their statute onto stone. This court
will not go any further than to construct the meaning of “process of justice” to mean the criminal
investigative and court process. If we were to construct the statute any other way, it would lead
to problematic results. Let's explore them.
If we were to extend the definition to civil process, then benign, normally non-criminal
activities would now suddenly become apt for prosecution. This is because the obstruction of
justice statute is so large that it does not curtail itself specifically around the parts of the civil
process that need to be protected. This now means that something as simple as failing to file civil
case paperwork on time could become a felony. It interferes with our extended definition of a
process of justice, and it hinders the judge from performing their duties. I doubt the government
has any disagreement that such a construction is absurd. This is because when a net as wide as
the obstruction of justice statute gets cast, innocent acts can easily be swept up. As a matter of
principle, a court can and should carve fine details into a criminal statute, but should not expand
beyond the elasticity of the intent of the “legislature”.
The same type of absurdity happens if we were to apply the statute to administrative
proceedings. If obstruction did apply to administrative proceedings then any failure to comply
with a policy would now become a criminal act rather than cause for termination.
Applying this definition to the text of the indictment, its wording, and the underlying acts fail to
pass muster. An exit search is not a criminal process. While the government highlights that these
searches are intended to discourage and prevent criminal conduct, the criminal process does not
engage until a crime is committed.
The first count of the indictment is not pleaded with legal sufficiency as to assert that an
offense was committed, and the court is not satisfied that a bill of particulars would remedy any
insufficiency.
B
As to the second count, the defendant is charged with failure to comply. To be guilty of
failure to comply, the government must prove that the defendant: 1) disobeyed an order, 2) that
the order was a lawful order, 3) that the order was given by a peace officer, and 4) that the order
was made before the accused’s conduct. The government successfully pleaded to all of these
elements in their indictment, however, the point of contention arises when we attempt to figure
out the definition of what a lawful order is. We will construct it to mean an order given by a
peace officer that is both authorized by law and given in the course of their duties as a peace
officer. For example, a lawful order would be for a peace officer to tell you to stop obstructing
traffic. This order is authorized by law through the traffic code, and it comes during their duties
as a peace officer. In other words, a lawful order is an order where the law explicitly or implicitly
authorizes force in furtherance of that order. This definition is well within the confines of
established law and if we were to draw it further to mean any order, then just like our prior
analysis, problems occur.
For example, if I were your captain at ACME Police Department, and I ordered that you
prepare some figures that I can use in my state-mandated report. You then fail to prepare me
those figures in time and now I send you off to the prosecutor's office. I gave you an order that
wasn’t illegal, and it furthered a legally mandated objective, and I was a peace officer. This
would be squarely within the extended definition and equally as absurd as an overly elastic
obstruction of justice statute. Our revised definition, however, does not allow this, because I
would not be otherwise allowed to detain you or use force for failing to prepare those figures.
In any other department, force is not authorized to achieve a non-criminal policy
objective. If this were any other department, perhaps our analysis would end here. To make this
matter more tricky, the National Guard is allowed to achieve a non-criminal policy objective
through force. 3 R. Stat. § 1605 ("The military police shall detain and take into custody any
guardsman who has violated any regulation for the purpose of a disciplinary proceeding or
investigation."), 3 R. Stat. § 1608 ("The military police shall enforce all regulations of the
National Guard, and may use force necessary to achieve such a purpose."). This court will make
clear that this does not explicitly criminalize failing to follow an order in the National Guard but
criminalizes interference with the use of force to enforce an order by military police. Two issues
are now facing this court. First, whether the National Guard had a policy that prohibited the
defendant’s conduct, and secondly, whether this search passes constitutional muster.
This court asked the government to attach any policy relating to exit searches and their
applications to a member of the National Guard, and the government entered two sources. The
first is the DA-10 or the standard search agreement universally used throughout the government
and an excerpt from the National Guard’s internal military police handbook. In no certain
language does the DA-10 tell an individual that they are required by departmental policy to
undergo an exit search. The internal handbook is not made available to the guardsmen and is held
internally. This court will not hold that internal policies all need to be made public for them to be
binding administratively, but we will hold that National Guard policies which it attempts to
enforce through criminal statute must be provided in their full text to those whom it will be
enforced upon. Otherwise, we would run afoul of the centuries-old precedent that for someone to
be punished by the criminal laws, they must first have had an opportunity to know the laws.
“Our cases establish that the Government violates this guarantee by taking away someone’s life,
liberty, or property under a criminal law so vague that it fails to give ordinary people fair notice
of the conduct it punishes, or so standardless that it invites arbitrary enforcement.” Johnson v.
United States, 576 U.S. 591, 595 (2015) citing Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357-358
(1983) Perhaps this court may be mistaken, and there may exist some regulation that was not
provided by the government. This court also knows that upon the circulation of this opinion,
National Guard policy will find itself quickly amended to comply but there still lies yet another
elephant in the room that will show its ugly head the next time this issue is visited. Because of
this, the court also finds it necessary to dispose of the constitutional issue as well.
Under Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, searches are classified into several different
categories namely employment and criminal. See O'Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 724 (1987)
This court will not review the issue as to whether an exit search is constitutional, but what type
of search was conducted on the defendant, and whether that search passes all legal requirements.
To identify the type of search conducted, we do not need to go any further than these
proceedings. If the search was done within the context of regular employment, then the
government would not be afforded any ability to prosecute for non-compliance. When the threat
for refusing a search is a criminal reprimand then it has crossed from the normal purview of an
employee search to a criminal search akin to having a warrant.
The DA-10 as presented does not constitute a waiver of criminal searches, but instead of
employment-based searches. The expectation of privacy the defendant had was curtailed around
his status of employment. “I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in
the termination of any positions I hold[.]” The defendant was not made aware that a breach of the
agreement would result in criminal penalties or that force was authorized to effectuate the search.
In an employment-based search, a defendant has the opportunity to immediately terminate the
search by simply refusing. Law enforcement are not permitted to use their powers to prevent a
defendant from terminating an employment-based search, and likewise, the government is not
empowered to prosecute someone for exercising their constitutional rights.
This court is sympathetic to the objectives the government is trying to accomplish. The
prevention of the proliferation of government-issued equipment is an important government
objective. Based solely on the allegations of the government, and without hearing any evidence
from the defendant, the conduct of the defendant was suspicious at best and malicious at worst.
The motivations of the defendant could be either disgruntled that he was being terminated
or the defendant was stalling in an attempt to transfer his unlawful equipment to another person.
This court will not make any attempt to classify the defendant into either of these categories or
any category, but it demonstrates that one set of intentions is completely benign and unrelated to
the government’s objective of preventing proliferation. This type of collateralization is
unacceptable and constitutionally impermissible. We’d like to think that the government
launched these proceedings with the belief that the defendant was purposefully stalling to
transfer equipment, but the government did so without consultation of the real possibility that the
defendant was just a disgruntled employee mad he was getting fired. The beauty of the search
warrant is that not only does it prevent needless government intrusion without probable cause,
but also needless government prosecutions like this one. If the government were to obtain a
warrant instead of an indictment, perhaps this ruling would look different.
The court finds the order that was given to a defendant by a law enforcement officer was
not a lawful order. Subsequently, the government has no possible way to plead the offense in a
legally congruent manner, and therefore count two of the indictment is dismissed.
IV. CONCLUSION
The motion to dismiss is GRANTED and the matter is DISMISSED with prejudice.
SO ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED in chambers in Milton, Ridgeway
County, Ridgeway, this 23rd day of March 2024.
/s/ siteowner
SITEOWNER
ASSOCIATE JUSTICE
Copies to: State / Defendant
DavidLClarke, Counsel of record for the defendant.
RyanJSyndicate, Counsel of record for the government.
