Court Opinion

ID: 9844287
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:00:07.45619+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:31.604641
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
A majority of the Court have now determined that they were in error in voting with Justice Shepard in State v. Villarreal,1 which was handed down just ten years ago. I am not so persuaded, but do agree that the Court, in reversing with directions to dismiss, is correctly applying Greene v. Massey, 437 U.S. 19, 98 S.Ct. 2151, 57 L.Ed.2d 15 (1978), and Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978) — which we recently relied upon in State v. Byers.2
In siding with Justice Shepard, I point out only that the Court’s longtime stance against the use at trial of preliminary hearing testimony remains tuned to the purpose and scope of preliminary hearings in Idaho’s criminal jurisprudence. I see nothing basically wrong in making a change in the case law simply because it is a change — but I doubt the advisability of making that change until it is made clear by the Court that the magistrate at a preliminary hear*484ing will be a lawyer magistrate 3 who is, as is the case with a grand jury, given to understand that he is not prohibited from making factual determinations in reaching his determination4 that a crime has been committed and that there is sufficient evidence to establish probable cause that the accused may be guilty.
The Court has not yet reached that point, however, for which reason, plus the fact that the problem before the trial court is not a consistently recurring one, I believe that the trial bar generally and the litigants represented in criminal cases would fare far better were the Court not to interfere at this time with long established case law, especially absent any illuminating reasoning for doing so.
Another aspect of this case which fails to excite the interest of other members of the Court is the unusual manner in which the preliminary testimony came to be offered and accepted. Although one would expect that the prosecuting attorney advanced this alternative remedy, it is quite clear from the record that the trial court, correctly anticipating this Court’s turnabout from Villarreal, suggested the procedure to the prosecutor. To be sure the trial court was only interested in seeing that all of the state’s case got before the jury, but there is a strong doubt in my mind that a trial judge should ever instruct, suggest or intimate to a prosecutor ways and means by which evidence may be submitted against a person criminally accused. On those grounds alone I would reverse and save the demise or survival of Villarreal for another day. Especially would I so hold where the recalcitrant witness’s tenacity was not tested by even a few hours in jail.

. State v. Villarreal, 94 Idaho 246, 486 P.2d 257 (1971),

. State v. Byers, 102 Idaho 159, 627 P.2d 788 (1981).

. See State v. Ruth, 98 Idaho 879, 882 n.1, 574 P.2d 1357, 1360 n.1 (1978) (Bistline, J., specially concurring).

. See Stockwell v. State, 98 Idaho 797, 813, 573 P.2d 116, 132 (1977) (Bistline, J., dissenting).