“While subsequent legislation clarifying a statute is not necessarily controlling on a court, it is strongly indicative of the legislature’s original intent.”
How later courts described this case
- “While subsequent legislation clarifying a statute is not necessarily controlling on a court, it is strongly indicative of the legislature’s original intent.”
- “A fundamental rule of statutory interpretation is that the unreasonableness of the result produced by one among alternative possible interpretations of a statute is reason for rejecting that interpretation in favor of another that would produce a reasonable result.”
- court rejects state legislature’s imposition of reasonable person standard in cases involving possession of stolen property
- “[w]here a former statute is amended, or a doubtful interpretation of a former statute rendered certain by subsequent legislation, it has been held that such amendment is persuasive evidence of what the Legislature intended by the first statute”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Gunderson, C. J., and Batjer, J.,
concurring:
We assume that the only issue the majority have elected to decide in this case is the issue they have elected to discuss.
We therefore agree with what we understand to be the majority’s ultimate conclusion: that NRS 200.030(1) (e), as originally adopted, should be construed only as encompassing “[kjilling more than one person as the result of a common [single] plan, scheme or design [to kill].” However, to arrive at this conclusion, we find it necessary only to notice that the foregoing seems the strictest available construction, and to consider that penal statutes must be strictly construed. Sheriff v. Hanks, 91 Nev. 57 , 530 P.2d 1191 (1975); Sardis v. District Court, 85 Nev. 585 , 460 P.2d 163 (1969).
Since we think that, strictly construed, the words employed by the legislature are quite intelligible, we have no difficulty agreeing that NRS 200.030(1) (e) is not unconstitutionally vague. We do so, however, without feeling constrained to refer to many of the cases and principles the majority apparently feel are significant to a determination of that issue.