Court Opinion

ID: 9791425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:10:39.79183+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:36.213849
License: Public Domain

CROCKETT, Justice
(concurring).
' I concur but desire to add these observations. While as pointed out in the opinion, the Board of Pardons has plenary power to release prisoners on condition, I think it implicit in the creation of the Board and its duties that the condition imposed must bear some reasonable relationship to the function it is purposed to perform. That is, it should be something calculated to assist in the treatment or rehabilitation of the individual and/or the protection of society. Only such a condition would be a valid exercise of the Board’s authority. But it is easy to imagine conditions which may be *355capricious or arbitrary and which would have no such purpose, in which event the condition could not properly he imposed.
Without knowing more facts than are made to appear to us, I confess difficulty in seeing how the order expelling plaintiff from the state of Utah would serve the purpose indicated. In that connection I observe that in my opinion it would be particularly unwise as a matter of policy and unfair to our neighboring states to order a convict to leave the state if this were done only because it seemed undesirable to have such an individual at large in Utah. If this is so, the likelihood is that it would likewise be undesirable for him to be at large in our sister states. If the officials of our own and our sister states should follow a policy of expelling persons for no other reason than that they are convicts, it would result in merely shuttling undesirable persons back and forth to each other.
However, in deference to the authority of the Board and its wisdom in performing its'duties, I am willing to assume that its' order was motivated by something other ' than the fact that plaintiff was a convict;' and that there was some particular reason why the purpose of his rehabilitation and/ or public safety would best be served by his removal from the state. Upon that basis I concur in affirming the judgment.