The Utah Supreme Court has struck down a section of Utah's communications-fraud statute as constitutionally vague — a step that will make it more difficult to criminally charge someone with lying in order to gain a benefit other than money.
In a series of three rulings issued Friday, the state's high court found that prosecutors must show a person gained something of monetary value in order to find someone guilty of communications fraud. The court also struck down a section of the fraud statute that allowed prosecutors to charge someone with a second-degree felony for obtaining something without monetary value through a scheme.
Utah County defense attorney Jennifer Gowans called Friday's decisions a much-needed step toward clarifying a law that theoretically would criminalize a husband for telling his wife that "she doesn't look fat in that dress."
Last February, Gowans and other defense attorneys argued to the Supreme Court that the law was so broad, it gave prosecutors too much power to go after simple lies. In its rulings Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the rest of the communications-fraud statute, which deals with telling lies to gain something of monetary value. The court ruled such speech is not protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
"The statute as it was written criminalized harmless conduct," Gowans said Monday.
Gowans represents Richard Mattinson, who was charged in 2001 with felony communications fraud after he took his ailing girlfriend to the emergency room at the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo. Court documents state Mattinson's girlfriend, Stevoni Wells, was in a great deal of pain and had a high fever from spinal meningitis.
Because Wells was a drug user with several arrest warrants, Mattinson used a false name for her and told hospital staff he was her husband, in an effort to get her medical care. He also gave staff two false Social Security numbers.
After treatment, the hospital sought to recover $5,868. Gowans argues Mattinson did not personally receive any benefit of monetary value. However, a jury convicted Mattinson, and the Utah Court of Appeal upheld his conviction.
Friday's decision by the Supreme Court reversed Mattinson's conviction and ordered a new trial for him.
The two other rulings dealt with Richard Norris, who was charged with misdemeanor communications fraud for hiring people to sell diet products and then having them sign contracts obligating them to pay Norris back when they couldn't sell the products.
Norris also pleaded guilty to communications fraud in a second case, in which he had made money by suing Utah subcontractors he had hired to sell advertising brochures. The Supreme Court upheld Norris' sentences in both cases, finding that the statute was properly applied.
Assistant Utah attorney general Matthew Bates said that while the rulings clarified the law, he did not think it would affect the ability of prosecutors to go after the vast majority of fraud cases, because most of them are monetary-based.
"We're confident that the decision in Mattinson is not going to have any substantial effect on fraud prosecution in Utah," Bates said.
Both Bates and Gowans said the true legal impact of the decisions has yet to be completely understood.
E-mail: gfattah@desnews.com