Opinion ID: 1384669
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Distribution of Powers

Text: From a Wyoming Constitution Art. 2 perspective, the legislature has the authority within Art. 1, § 9 of the Wyoming Constitution to continue, discontinue, or modify the generic obligation of the grand jury. With a determined separation-of-powers status, I have no difference from the comparable discussion in the majority opinion. Concomitantly, however, the Supreme Court cannot abdicate its separate constitutional power and responsibility to assure citizen guarantees of rights expressly enumerated in Art. 1 of the Wyoming Constitution, or empirical, implicit, or explicit responsibilities for appropriate rules of procedure for that criminal justice institution in operation in accord with both inherent powers of Art. 5 of the Wyoming Constitution, and statutory designation as found in §§ 5-2-114 and 5-2-115, W.S. 1977. See White v. Fisher, Wyo., 689 P.2d 102 (1984); Matter of Amendment of Court Rules for Fees and Costs, 737 P.2d LXXXIX (1987), Urbigkit, J., dissenting; and the comprehensive evaluation of exercised responsibility of the Wyoming Supreme Court, Gallivan, Supreme Court Jurisdiction and the Wyoming Constitution: Justice v. Judicial Restraint, XX Land & Water L.Rev. 159 (1985). Although under the call-to-reform criteria the continuation of indictment function of the grand jury in its present form is probably unjustified, such decision is legislative; however, the operational function and constitutional characteristics cannot properly be ignored and unattended by this court. It is in the perspective of prior statutes, new statutes that now control, and recognized principles of constitutional law, that I respectfully dissent to the decision of this court in affirming the conviction of Joseph M. Hennigan, Jr. [7] The thesis to be presented in this dissent in assessing the supervisory responsibilities of the Supreme Court to provide a properly operative system as long as legislatively retained, is that more than legislative, the problems and answers are judicial, springing directly from the Wyoming Constitution. Moses Lasky, a prominent California attorney, in analysis of the legality of folklore as applied to the subject of California antitrust law, considered inconsistent assertions which are also mythology to suggest that mythical history is created to support legal propositions reached without regard to history. Indeed, he suggests that the premise of legal opinions is often selected after the conclusion has been reached:    A Court may create law based upon a falsehood of history, and its law is the law whatever the illegitimacy of its birth. But courts cannot alter truth. Lasky, Folklore and Myth in Judicial Opinions  Some Reflections Inspired by Texaco-Getty, 20 U.C.Davis L.Rev. 591, 592 (1987) His reactivity to the course of present adjudicatory responsibilities is further amplified in conclusion:    Archimedes exclaimed, `Give me a fulcrum on which to rest a lever, and I will move the world.' A cynic might paraphrase, `Give me the premise from which to begin, and I will reach the result I desire.' So it may be with judicial decisions: they do not start with a premise and then by a course of reasoning proceed to their conclusions. In the formal opinion the film indeed runs forward, but before the opinion was written the film was run backward. The court starts with the desired conclusion and then, by running the film backward, discovers the premises from which to begin the reasoning that will compel the conclusion. And, Miracle Visu, so it does! Id. at 607. I worry that here we do just that in purgation of the Campbell County grand jury process. As directly applied to this subject, a comprehensive consideration of the actual function of the grand jury is analyzed in historical detail in Schwartz, Demythologizing The Historic Role of the Grand Jury, 10 American Crim.L.Rev. 701, 770 (1972). In noting the abolition of the grand jury in England, the author reflected: Abolition of the grand jury is not the answer. Even the most conservative among us recognize that `the myth that ours is a government of law, not men is infinitely cherished, and it is infinitely hollow.' Constitutional provisions are therefore subject to evolution by interpretations which change as swiftly as does membership on the bench of the Supreme Court. Facing the likelihood of narrowed protections at the secondary (trial) level, it would be foolish indeed to abandon the primary barrier between the accused and the accuser, the grand jury. In this age of conflict, it is infinitely more important that the traditional shield be reenforced; that it not continue to degenerate into a mere shibboleth, lauded as a protection when in reality it is not. A recognization that folklore aside, the grand jury is no guardian of liberty is seen in Antell, The Modern Grand Jury, Benighted Supergovernment, 51 A.B.A.J. 153 (Feb. 1965), and substantially amplified by former United States Senator Abourezk in The Inquisition Revisited, 7 Barrister 19 (1980), and of Judge Lucile A. Watts, Michigan Grand Jury an Anachronism or Useful Tool?, 1983 Det.C.L.Rev. 1477. The Colorado legislature directly recognized reform by comprehensive curative action in 1977, including adequate instruction; a complete record without off-the-record interstices; subpoena advisement of rights; transactional immunity; target-victim protection; right to testify; right to in-session counsel; and actual record factual support in indictment. Bayless, Grand Jury Reform: The Colorado Experience, 67 A.B.A.J. 568 (May 1981). Similarly, note the recommendation of a tiered review system in decision to seek an indictment; earlier access to grand jury testimony; reduction in size of the panel; counsel representation; and only particularized justified use of hearsay. Sullivan and Nachman, If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It: Why the Grand Jury's Accusatory Function Should Not be Changed, 75 J.Crim.L. and Criminality 1047 (1984), supported in reform by earlier publication of the American Bar Association in Janofsky, Association Proposes Grand Jury Reforms, 66 A.B.A.J. 810 (July 1980). Most literature would generally reflect that    today, the grand jury is a total captive of the prosecution who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before a grand jury. Campbell, Eliminate the Grand Jury, 64 J.Crim.Law and Criminality 174 (1973). See also Comment, The Improbability of Probable Cause  The Inequity of the Grand Jury Indictment Versus the Preliminary Hearing in the Illinois Criminal Process, 1981 S.Ill.L.J. 281; Note, The Exercise of Supervisory Powers to Dismiss a Grand Jury Indictment  A Basis for Curbing Prosecutorial Misconduct, 45 Ohio St.L.J. 1077 (1984). As concluded in Trichter and Lewis, The Grand Jury, Putative Grand Jury Witnesses and the Right to Limited Counsel  A Historical Overview and Modest Proposal, 20 S.Tex. L.J. 81, 110 (1979): Our government is based on the notion that an individual's rights are of primary importance, and that by safeguarding the right of one person, the rights of all persons are then protected. It has been conceded that what the grand jury is supposed to be, and what it actually is, are two different things. Because of the dominance of its investigative role, and because of the absence of counsel and other pretrial safeguards from such proceedings, the grand jury, at least in respect to the rights of a suspect witness, is an anomaly of American jurisprudence. Even more definitively, as stated in Shannon, The Grand Jury: True Tribunal of the People or Administrative Agency of the Prosecutor?, 2 N.M.L.Rev. 141, 170 (1972), in referring to the monumental study of Dean and later Senator Wayne Morse:    Those who would reform [grand jury indictment] might well adopt as their model the sage counsel of one judge from Wisconsin who answered the Morse questionnaire in 1930 with these words: `I can think of no possible use for a grand jury where there is a conscientious prosecutor. Where the prosecutor is no good I cannot imagine where a grand jury is going to make him any better... .' Elimination of the grand jury has received broad consideration in discussion and analysis generally inclusive of a repetitive criticism of unfairness and incompetency. Miller, Shall the Grand Jury in Ordinary Criminal Cases be Dispensed with in Minnesota?, 6 Minn.L.Rev. 615 (1924). Cessante ratione legis cessat et ipsa lex. [8] Lawyer, Should the Grand Jury System be Abolished?, 15 Yale L.J. 178, 187 (1906). A comprehensive view of similar import was found in the reformist apologist of the investigatory grand jury by the populist ideology, as discussed by Younger, The Grand Jury Under Attack III, 46 J.Crim.Law and Criminology 214, 225 (1955). The grand jury process is singularly denied in present application, and surely so in its prosecutorial application here. Any idea of an independent function is not supportable in the record made or the activities observed. An exceptionally comprehensive consideration is found in Bennett L. Gershman, Prosecutorial Misconduct (1986), Ch. 2, Prosecutorial Misconduct in the Grand Jury, p. 2-1.    [T]he discretionary power accorded the prosecutor cannot be justified as a tactical weapon to be used merely to circumvent the preliminary hearing and the benefits that proceeding bestows on the defendant. Unlimited prosecutorial manipulation of that power should no longer be tolerated. Note, The Prosecutor's Duty to Present Exculpatory Evidence to an Indicting Grand Jury, 75 Mich.L.Rev. 1514, 1538 (1977). More recently, editorial consideration of the Utah experience is directly expressed in an editorial of the Ogden Standard-Examiner, Friday, July 10, 1987, at 14A: The grand jury has been dismissed. It becomes a matter of urgency that the task force, which includes many scholarly minds, be reassembled with a mandate to determine the future of the system in Utah and recommend avenues for major reform. Trial Court Judge Scott Daniels, presiding judge of the 3rd District, made cogent references to the judicial anachronism of a system that is too expensive, too cumbersome, don't protect the rights of the accused as designed. Speaking as a task force member, not as the authoritative spokesmen for the courts, Daniels recommends that the system be eliminated. Daniels suggests that the task force renew aggressively their work to recommend a system of justice such as a special prosecutor to replace the grand jury as a means of investigating extraordinary crimes and corruption.          It is clear that something must be done to overcome the confusion, conflicts and ambiguities of the grand jury statute, not to mention a costly system of getting to the bottom of criminal complaints. Legislative reform to eliminate the antiquated grand jury system is imperative. Similar, although dated nearly 30 years earlier, is reference to North Carolina newspapers, in Watts, Grand Jury: Sleeping Watchdog or Expensive Antique?, 37 N.C.L.Rev. 290, 297 (1959):    [T]he inexorable movement seems to be in the direction of by-passing the jury in the accusation process either by virtue of waiver of indictment or by suspension of the indictment requirement in all or in all but capital or serious felony cases, although the author concludes that with significant reform, the institution should not be lightly cast away. Id. at 314. Of the essence in dissent is the inquiry whether in the improved function of the grand jury we can ignore the supervisory responsibility of the judiciary to answer the manifest failures and defeasances consistently discussed by nearly all current writers on the subject. The justice system functional issue and my constitutional concern are not novel, new, or unnoticed.