Opinion ID: 1702261
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: strange reasoning

Text: We need to examine some astounding statements of the majority. (Majority Opinion, p. 11) Now if Miss. Code Ann. § 25-4-107 says anything, it says a citizen sued for some violation under the Act has a right to a jury trial and for the verdict to be unanimous. There is no way to express anything plainer than this. How does the majority get around this? First, it tells the reader that It is not at all clear our legislature would have the authority to preclude summary judgment in this case, citing Newell v. State, 308 So.2d 71, 78 (Miss. 1975). What's that? Our Constitution does not authorize the people of this State to pass a law guaranteeing a trial by jury in a civil case? Only this Court can do that? Where is the authority for such a proposition in our Mississippi Constitution? According to the majority, the people must amend the Constitution to give themselves the right to guarantee a trial by jury in a civil case. I find this astonishing. The majority's citation of Newell as authority for its position is, to use the genetics of that case, to produce a Frankenstein. This does not end the matter, however. Having told us it is not at all clear that the Legislature has such authority, it proceeds to insult the reader's intelligence by assuring him or her that, What is clear is the legislature has made no such attempt.  (Emphasis added) Does the majority think the reader cannot read? There is, however, substantial authority from this Court for today's holding, conspicuously absent from the majority opinion. The unspoken, but true authority for the majority's holding in this case is Hall v. State, 539 So.2d 1338 (Miss. 1989), when we politely informed the Legislature it had neither the competence nor the authority under our Constitution to pass an evidentiary act in child sex abuse cases. Of course, if we had the authority to do what we did in Hall, we have the authority to again tell the Legislature it cannot guarantee a citizen a right to a trial by jury. Why didn't the majority cite Hall? With blitzkreig rapidity Hall was followed by McClendon v. State, 539 So.2d 1375, 1377 (Miss. 1989), and McCarty v. State, 554 So.2d 909, 913 (Miss. 1989), when we informed the Legislature it had no authority to pass laws on the court procedures a convicted felon seeking to get out of the penitentiary must follow. Only this Court could do that, but we magnanimously accepted what the Legislature had enacted. Thence onto Blanks v. State, 542 So.2d 222, 225 (Miss. 1989), when we held the Legislature could not enact a valid law on criminal procedure unless we accepted it, but again because what they had enacted was satisfactory to us, we accepted it. These holdings, not Newell, are the true authority for today's holding. See where we are headed? See how far we have come? Of course, if we have the lawful authority for the above audacious holdings, then we have the authority, as Justice McRae recently wrote, to abolish the speedy trial statute, Miss. Code Ann. § 99-17-1, because it, too, is clearly procedural. Flores v. State, 586 So.2d 811, 816 (Miss. 1991). It does follow logically that if the Legislature has no authority to pass an evidentiary act in a criminal case, no authority to enact a statute governing rights of the accused and the prosecution in a criminal case, no authority to enact statutes on the procedure a man in the penitentiary must follow, all invade our inherent rule-making power and any act they pass is not worth the paper it is written upon unless we accept it, then this Court has the authority to hold what it does today. By this Court's decree the people of this State have no right under our Constitution to have their Legislature pass a law on evidence in a criminal case, no authority to pass laws governing the rights of the accused and State in criminal prosecutions, no authority to enact statutes governing felons who seek to get out of prison. Nor can the people guarantee a right to trial by jury for a violation of a statute. We need not trouble ourselves to examine whether what they have written is unconstitutional. The very act of the Legislature in enacting, and the act of the Governor in signing such a law is beyond their authority under the Constitution. In Hall v. State, 539 So.2d at 1364, I attempted to warn, [T]he sole power to make rules of practice is the power to decide all cases long before they ever arise. By rules we can make it almost impossible to convict, or else almost impossible to acquit.