Court Opinion

ID: 9549837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:25:27.183538+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:58.021034
License: Public Domain

THOMAS, Justice,
dissenting, with whom GOLDEN, J., joins.
Dear Lady:
The Supreme Court of Wyoming has elected to reverse the convictions of two of those who abducted and sexually assaulted you. We are persuaded that they were denied the constitutional right to a speedy trial. Since that right cannot be reinstated at this time, these individuals must go free.
*112The Court had to be most concerned about the anxiety your tormentors experienced while they were awaiting trial. We assume they must have been distraught because of the uncertainty of what the future might hold for them. The pending charges well may have affected adversely their social relations, inhibited their freedom of movement, and caused them to suffer anxiety because of the public accusation. Possibly, they had some difficulty in obtaining employment, and it is likely there was a cloud of suspicion surrounding them.
It is true that no one threatened to wreak his will on them and then kill them but, on balance, these concerns must be afforded more significance on the scales of justice than the terror and trauma inflicted upon you. These factors have far more societal and legal significance than what these men did to you. The court can do nothing to change your experience, but it can address the right to a speedy trial.
We hope that you can understand and accept the decision of this court. Remember how important the right to a speedy trial will be to you when you commit some crime. Certainly, that right is equally important to all of us when we are involved in criminal misconduct.
Very truly yours,
THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF WYOMING
What a tragic letter! Unfortunately, it captures the essence of the opinion of the court. I vehemently dissent.
The majority decision in this case is not necessary. The thesis that the reversal of this conviction and the conviction in the companion case is mandated by constitutional principles is not correct. Justice Golden has ably summarized the law in this area in the companion case of Phillips, and I am pleased to join in his opinion in this case. In terms of constitutional requirements, these facts fit well within established limits.
Since the reversal of these convictions is not required by constitutional precepts, the court’s decision simply manifests an exercise of its supervisory authority over the trial courts. I have no fundamental objection to the exercise of such supervisory authority when it is appropriate. Doing so in this case is not a wise choice. For me, the propriety of invoking the supervisory authority would depend upon showing actual prejudice to the accused which interfered with a fair trial.
While I agree that the majority approach is not an accurate application of constitutional requirements, I also have a deep philosophical difference with what the court has done. My analysis of this decision is based upon the premise that the application of constitutional principles is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Invoking constitutional principles as an end in itself is a purely academic approach. Those principles, however, evolved out of a desire to promote the well-being of the citizens of a fledgling nation and to secure for each of them those ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence:
“ * * * [Tjhey are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, * * * ii
It is in the light of these claims that I borrow from Handler, Jurisprudence and Prudential Justice, 16 Seton Hall L.Rev. 571, 572 (1986), this statement, somewhat out of context:
“ * * * Indeed, as a constituent and vital part of representative democratic government, the judiciary must be highly attuned to the needs and feelings of its citizens; it should be acutely aware of the public’s perception of its general performance, as well as its particular decisions. In short, the judiciary cannot be oblivious to the reactions that its own actions have engendered or the effects that its adjudications have created within the society it serves.”
*113My perception of the reaction of the society this court serves to this decision is best captured by parody.
With all due respect to Lewis Carroll, one of the episodes that could be encompassed in his marvelous classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland might well unfold like this:
Alice was following her guide, White Rabbit, through a busy street in Wonderland. White Rabbit pointed to a man and said, “Alice, that man used to be a rapist.”
Alice, her interest piqued, replied innocently, “That is interesting. When did he stop being a rapist?”
White Rabbit responded, “Well, you see, he didn’t do it.”
This puzzled Alice, who asked, “Well, if he didn’t do it, how can you say he used to be a rapist?”
White Rabbit answered very patiently, “Alice, you must realize that he didn’t do it, not because he didn’t do it, but because it took us too long to say he did it.”
Alice was amused. She said, “Well, I suppose that does make good sense. I do wonder, however, how we knew it took us too long to say he did it so that it was clear that he didn’t do it.”
White Rabbit was becoming a bit exasperated, but he explained, “Alice, some of our rule makers went to a private place and voted, and they decided that 531 days is too long to say that he did it. They pointed out that there is a general rule requiring us to say that he did it in 120 days and, therefore, if we don’t say he did it in at least sooner than 531 days, then he didn’t do it.”
“Oh,” said Alice, “I suppose that is an appropriate thing for our rule makers to do, but I wonder if there was someone who was a victim when he used to be a rapist.”
White Rabbit pondered that question for a moment and then said, “I’m sure there must have been a victim because he could not have been a rapist without a victim.”
Alice frowned, but then her face brightened, and she said, “Oh, then, I would understand that, after 531 days, the person who was a victim isn’t a victim anymore because the rapist isn’t a rapist any more.”
White Rabbit applauded. “Alice,” he said, “I think you are beginning to appreciate the wonder of Wonderland.”
It is appropriate to consider some of the wisdom of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his address entitled The Spiritual Exhaustion of the West delivered at commencement exercises at Harvard University. In the course of those remarks, Solzhenitsyn said:
“ * * * The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
“Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counterbalanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against evil.
“And what shall we say about the dark realm of criminality as such? Legal frames (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights. There are many such cases.
“Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually, but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind, and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the *114best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society. There is a huge number of prisoners in our camps who are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state resorting to means outside of a legal framework.” (Emphasis added.)
My understanding is that people in this country and people in the State of Wyoming are essentially dissatisfied with the release of criminals based upon what they perceive to be technicalities. I know the immediate response is that this is not a technicality but is a significant constitutional principle.
In applying constitutional principles such as the right to speedy trial, however, it is interesting to note that the true beneficiaries are the lawless individuals. What has occurred in the United States, as Solzhenitsyn so perceptively has noted, is that we have taken principles designed for the benefit of all the people and invoked them only to encourage those who commit crime with the result that they have been forged into shackles inhibiting the lives of most other people.
It is appropriate then to contemplate the constitutional principle in its historical setting. I do not understand that there is much empirical data to support the notion that, in pre-revolutionary times in the United States of America, murderers, rapists, and other common criminals had any particular difficulty in having their cases resolved. Instead, there were people like those alluded to by Solzhenitsyn, political prisoners who were simply trying to defend themselves against the lawlessness of the king. Our forefathers deemed it important to inhibit the incarceration without trial of individuals who were not being brought to trial because there was a serious question as to whether they had committed any crime. The right to a speedy trial demands that such accusations be addressed with dispatch so that political enemies of the government cannot be disenfranchised by the imposition of questionable charges followed by incarceration without trial.
I have no difficulty in supporting the constitutional principle. I even have no difficulty extending it to any criminal case. The difficulty that I have is with invoking the right to a speedy trial when it is not necessary to prevent actual prejudice, but its application, instead, is premised only upon an assumption of prejudice. In this instance, no one is able to suggest that Harvey suffered actual prejudice in defending the case. There is no indication that any evidence which might have been helpful to him has been lost in the process. Harvey was not incarcerated while awaiting trial. Consequently, the only prejudice that can be identified, which might support the invocation of this drastic remedy, is the assumption that he suffered personal anxiety over the public accusation, suffered inhibition of his freedom of movement, incurred an adverse effect on his social relations, had some possible difficulty in obtaining employment, and perhaps lived under a cloud of suspicion. I doubt that a cloud of suspicion is very troublesome to the guilty, and we don’t have any question that Harvey is guilty. Harvey didn’t even tell us that he was anxious or suffered any other aspect of the assumed prejudice; we simply presume those effects.
The majority opinion appears to faithfully follow the balancing test of Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972), which has been adopted by this court in other cases. It does so only in appearance because, properly applied, the balancing test does not mandate a reversal in this instance. I am not persuaded, however, that the balancing test which has been articulated by the Supreme Court of the United States really addresses the interests which are involved. Scrutiny of Barker, and the cases which have followed the balancing test, demonstrates that the concern of the court was a balancing of the interests of the prosecution in trying the case against the interest of the accused in preserving his constitutional right to a speedy trial. Articulated in this fashion, the balancing test assumes an independent interest of the prosecution which *115seems to be a superficial assumption. The State has an interest, it is true, but its interest is derived from the common interest of the citizens. On their behalf, the State is charged with protecting them from criminal conduct on the part of others and with enforcing the criminal statutes adopted to that end. The logical consideration is a balancing of this interest of society against the interest of the accused in preserving the constitutional right to a speedy trial, and I perceive that to be a far broader interest than the interest of the prosecution in having an opportunity to effectively try the case.
The interest which must be balanced against the interest of the accused in preserving a constitutional right to a speedy trial is the interest which society has in protecting its collective members from criminal acts. Society has a particular interest, again representing the interest of its collective members, in seeing to the punishment of malefactors in an appropriate fashion. This interest is sacrificed by the majority opinion in this instance simply for the purpose of demonstrating the supervisory authority of this court and, in a sense, articulating a maximum time frame for bringing defendants like these rapists to trial.
I am not unfamiliar with the argument that it is necessary to protect the constitutional rights of an individual such as Harvey in order to secure those constitutional rights for the rest of the people. My response simply is: of what moment are constitutional rights to those innocent victims of gang warfare and hooliganism that have erupted in one of our major cities? More specifically, of what moment are the constitutional rights of this victim of Harvey and his cohorts if she cannot walk the streets of Rock Springs without having this style of outrage inflicted upon her? Why is it necessary to set Harvey free in order to establish a constitutional principle that is well recognized when, in order to do so, prejudice to Harvey can only be perceived by speculation, not by the examination of a physician in a hospital emergency room nor by the perceptions of police officers who interrupted a crime that had the potential to be much more serious than it was? I have come to understand that those constitutional rights did not receive recognition in the context of a society in which crime was rampant. The motive for adopting those statements of rights was to protect citizens from excesses of government, and they were not influenced by the need to protect citizens from individuals who were out of control.
It does indeed seem a fair comment that the individual freedoms articulated in the Bill of Rights have been applied in this country for the benefit only of those who themselves choose to deprive others of life, liberty, or property without any concern for due process of law. This philosophy, instead of protecting citizens, has contributed to the widespread lawlessness that we witness in this country. It is part and parcel of a loss of freedom on the part of those good citizens who now must double lock their doors and who are fearful of going abroad on the streets of our cities and towns, not only in the darkness of night but in the brightness of day. Those of us who serve in the judicial department need to understand that decisions such as this, in many subtle ways, have influenced the level of crime in our society. The criminals among us perceive permissiveness in results like this, and they are encouraged to further depredations.
If these constitutional principles have justification in American society, shouldn’t they somehow be interpreted and construed to the end that the interests of society are balanced against individual interests and not simply for the academic purpose of defining the specifics of broad constitutional principles. Indeed, it may be true, as Solzhenitsyn suggests, that Western society has lost its capacity to protect itself from lawlessness. I know that there will be many who will say but, of course, that includes lawlessness on the part of the government. Unfortunately, I am not able to perceive lawlessness on the part of the government in this instance. I can perceive negligence. I can perceive a failure to establish, as a matter of court records, all of the reasons that these trials were *116delayed. I can perceive an earnest effort by prosecutors to bring to the bar of justice all three of the perpetrators of this outrage upon this lady. But lawlessness in any way comparable to the conduct of these defendants is simply absent, and there is really nothing to balance in that regard.
In the interest of academic consideration of the constitutional right to a speedy trial, we have structured a bogeyman of governmental lawlessness. We then destroy that bogeyman in the interests, we say, of the citizens. That is not necessary. Perhaps we can deal with one problem at a time. The problem present in this instance was the commission of a vicious crime by Harvey. My judgment and my reason lead me to conclude that society should assure Harvey his just desserts for his criminal conduct. When, and if, governmental lawlessness becomes present, we can address that as the occasion demands. The evil which cries out to be addressed in our time is crime in society.
The judiciary in this country has come to be criticized because it releases those guilty of crime based upon technicalities. When I witness the product of this case, I cannot deny that claim. The majority, for the sole purpose of achieving an academic articulation of the constitutional concept of a right to a speedy trial, has deprived a citizen of Wyoming of the protection that our judicial system should afford her. It has set free two clearly guilty perpetrators of a sexual assault. I perceive that as constitutional imbalance, and the product of this application of constitutional principles designed to protect the freedom of all citizens has been to set free the guilty and leave the victim without recourse.
The next act already is being played in some places around this country. Citizens, having lost confidence in the ability or willingness of the constitutional system to protect them from crime, have begun to pursue vigilante approaches. Given the ingenious capacity of judges to find reasons to set the guilty free, perhaps the citizens should not be severely blamed. On the other hand, the “Oxbow Incident” was not a happy story, and it is far better that the criminal justice system be invoked and pursued than individual or mob response. If that is to happen, however, then the criminal justice system must have an accurate vision of its role, and the attempts to satisfy the innovative and ingenious arguments of academicians perhaps must yield to more pragmatic solutions.
I recognize that dissenting opinions have no force in establishing the rules of law. My philosophical response simply is designed to make it plain that the tender feelings of rapists, murderers, and other common criminals should not be the primary concern of the judiciary. If society is to make any progress in developing a stance which will offer some prospect that law-abiding citizens will enjoy freedom from the fear that has its genesis in the unconscionable criminal conduct of others, then society needs to forge justice. Justice should have priority over the unnecessary effort to elucidate constitutional principles.
I would affirm the conviction.