Court Opinion

ID: 9575262
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:12:37.668448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:42.462704
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting):
I concur in the dissent with Mr. Justice Crockett except as to that part of his opinion suggesting that to seal or expunge criminal records is an unpardonable sin, and interment of the truth and a distortion of justice. I agree generally that expungement and sealing of public records should fly on the wings of a rare bird, — but I think it wholesome and responsive to the public weal, if, in a given case, it would award a young man, for example, the opportunity to enlist in the military, possibly to die for his country, and doing so, might suffer physical, as well as bookkeeping, ex-pungement, but who somehow might exult in some kind of spiritual compensation. This in the light of perhaps a Christian interment of a penitent criminal and a forgivable, non-capital, record that in perpetuity, admittedly would prevent such a pardon (which traditionally is American and human), rather than to pursue a course that may burn away his everything on a pyre of papyrus in a musty County Court House.
We extend such authority to the Probate Court, where the history of an adopted child is sealed in silence,1 where the heartbreak of revealing it in some instances would be the difference between unmerciful death and merciful life. The pardoning power is an adjunct of what this author is trying to say. Many a convict is entitled to some kind of chance, and if a reasonable, properly administered bit of nondisclosure would help to get him a job without forsaking entirely his heritage and country, and without constant police surveillance, rather than promoting recidivism, — I see no sense other than to apply the Biblical admonition to go hence and sin no more, — and if he follows it, let’s forget *880it. I think the statute points up such a philosophy, — but even yet could be more viable.

. Title 78-30-15, Utah Code Annotated, 1953.