Court Opinion

ID: 9530348
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:59:16.063761+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:05.158308
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring in result:
A meaningful pronouncement of the law applicable to this first-impression issue in the case before us there cannot be. That quality of disposition is precluded by the record-revealed anatomy of the controversy and by the overambitious relief pressed for on this appeal from the district court-affirmed order of driver license revocation.
The burden of explaining nonproduction of the statutorily mandated transcript of prior administrative hearing and the duty of securing the necessary judicial exculpation for nonperformance of a clear responsibility must be recognized as legally cast not on the aggrieved licensee but on the Commissioner of Public Safety.1 That official’s duty to produce the transcript is every bit as broad here — if not broader — as that which is generally imposed on the government in criminal and delinquency cases when a request is made by an indigent accused.2 While the Commissioner did not perceive, nor undertake to sustain, his burden in this case,3 the licensee [appellant] utterly failed vigorously to press the point both at trial and on appeal.
Neither here nor below did appellant seek, upon some tenable legal basis, to remand the case for another hearing before the Commissioner’s examiner. No attempt has been made to show prejudice from the government’s failure to produce the required transcript.
A government's failure to perform its clear statutory duty to record or transcribe, either or both, an administrative hearing should never be treated lightly. The judicial service must vigilantly guard against government lawlessness. My ear would be most sympathetic to appellant’s position, if the record, coupled with his more narrowly articulated plea for relief, were to reveal a timely-raised complaint of prejudice from loss of a clear statutory right vigorously pursued and firmly anchored on some reasoned explanation.

. 47 O.S.1971 § 754 mandates that proceedings before the administrative hearing examiner of the Commissioner be transcribed in all cases. The 1975 amendment has narrowed this duty by requiring that the proceedings be recorded. 47 O.S.Supp.1975 § 754.

. In criminal and delinquency cases the burden of showing that a full appellate or preliminary hearing transcript may be dispensed with or that alternative record media available are adequate is unquestionably cast on the government. Matter of Rich, Okl., 604 P.2d 1248, 1252 [1979]. Some members of this court would like to see the same quantum of responsibility extended to all proceedings under the rubric of juvenile process. Matter of Rich, Okl., 604 P.2d at 1254 [dissenting opinion by Simms, J.].

.The testimonially unsupported explanation offered for the transcript’s nonproduction was that the tape on which the proceedings had been recorded was lost or misplaced. No details were given.