People v. Noble

In People v. Noble, 238 Mich. App. 647; 608 N.W.2d 123 (1999), the Court described the means by which a statute may be challenged as vague and the manner in which we analyze such claims: A statute may be challenged for vagueness on three grounds: (1) that it is overbroad and impinges on First Amendment freedoms; (2) that it does not provide fair notice of the conduct proscribed; (3) that it is so indefinite that it confers unstructured and unlimited discretion on the trier of fact to determine whether the law has been violated. . . . To give fair notice, a statute must give a person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited or required. The statute cannot use terms that require persons of ordinary intelligence to guess its meaning and differ about its application. A statute is sufficiently definite if its meaning can fairly be ascertained by reference to judicial interpretations, the common law, dictionaries, treatises, or the commonly accepted meanings of words. Noble, 238 Mich. App. at 651-652.