Court Opinion

ID: 9579799
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:58:45.075006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:47.228300
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
I would reverse to give an actual hearing before another judge. The decision in State ex rel. Hopkinson v. District Court, Teton County, Wyo., 696 P.2d 54 (1985) is founded on neither compelling precedent nor adjudicatorily fair logic. Present application of the Hopkinson rule to any later case is not acceptable to me.
If the contentions of the defendant in the statutorily provided and constitutionally premised proceedings of § 7-14-101, et seq., W.S.1977, are legally unsüstained or factually unsupported, society is not at risk in providing a fair and adequate hearing by an impartial jurist.
I would reverse and re-assign to another judge in accord with the philosophy of the statute, Ch. 63, S.L. of Wyoming 1961:
“AN ACT to provide a remedy for persons convicted and imprisoned in the penitentiary, who assert that rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States or the State of Wyoming, or both, have been denied or violated in proceedings in which they were convicted.”
See Art. I, §§ 6, 8, and 14 of the Wyoming Constitution, and Amendments V, VIII, and XIV of the United States Constitution.