Anti-Stalking Law Withstands Court Challenge Montana Supreme Court Says 2-Year-Old Law Isn’t Too Vague Or Broad

Montana’s 2-year-old anti-stalking law has survived a constitutional challenge in a case involving a Hamilton man’s infatuation with a married woman.

The state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the law as neither too vague nor too broad.

The justices unanimously said that Shawn Martel failed to show that his constitutional rights - or those of anyone else - have been violated by the law.

Martel was convicted of stalking a woman for about eight months beginning in October 1992.

The woman, identified only as C.K., worked as a bank teller and Martel would repeatedly drive by the bank and wave. He approached her at the grocery store and frequently asked her to meet him at a motel.

Once, Martel told her he would commit suicide if they could not be friends.

He followed C.K. daily and once sat next to the woman and her husband in a movie theater. When the couple moved to other seats, Martel moved with them.

The woman’s husband told Martel to leave the family alone, but the warning had no effect. Martel confronted C.K. at a gas station, brandished a gun and implied he would use it if she called the police.

The woman filed a complaint against Martel in March 1993 and the police advised Martel to stay away from C.K. Martel continued to follow her and circle the bank.

The stalking law took effect in April 1993. The following month, Martel confronted the woman and her husband in a parking lot and the incident led to a scuffle between the two men outside the police station.

C.K. obtained a court order against Martel, but he continued stalking her. Charges were filed. Martel was convicted of stalking and sentenced to 14 days in jail.

On appeal, the Supreme Court rejected Martel’s claim that the stalking law violates the constitution’s ban on vague and overbroad statutes.

Although all the words used in the law are not defined, they easily can be recognized and understood by people of average intelligence, the court said.

A reasonable person knows what the law means when it refers to actions that cause “apprehension” or “substantial emotional distress,” it added.

Martel failed to prove his claim that the law infringes on any constitutionally protected rights, the justices said.

The law “serves a plainly legitimate purpose - to discourage the repeated, intentional, harmful conduct which constitutes stalking.”