Court Opinion

ID: 9857184
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 13:54:49.517405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:06.525026
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice
dissenting on denial of petition for rehearing.
“We, as did the Washington Supreme Court, hereby extend the rule heretofore applied only in civil cases to non-jury criminal trials.”
Mr. Powell’s petition for a rehearing is this day being denied, thus concluding his attempts at obtaining relief from a conviction and sentence both of which are wholly unjustified by the record which this court reviewed, and equally unjust to the state’s taxpayers who will bear the burden of paying Mr. Powell’s room and board for quite a period of time. Where there were two strong votes on this Court of five members for holding that Mr. Powell was convicted on the basis that the prosecution was allowed by the district court to establish its case on evidence which was inadmissible, and additionally, no record was presented as to how the court ruled on objections, it was believed that a reasonable exercise of judicial discretion would be to set aside one hour to rehear oral argument and re-evaluate the validity of the Court’s opinion.
Particularly disturbing is the Court’s unwarranted application of the Washington Supreme Court’s State v. Miles, 77 Wash.2d 593, 464 P.2d 723, 728 (1970). To blindly accept the Miles decision is to also accept the two earlier Washington cases on which the Miles court placed full reliance, as is readily noted in the Miles excerpt which guides the Court in arriving at an opinion. Obviously, State v. Bell has not been examined by those in the majority, or else some citation more informative than “supra” would have been provided.
State v. Bell can be found at 368 P.2d at 177-94. That case does not reflect any credit on the Washington Supreme Court. It does display remarkable ingenuity. Apparently proceeding with a preconceived idea of where it was heading, the 1962 Washington Supreme Court harkened back fifty-five years to the 1907 ease of Degginger v. Martin, 48 Wash. 1, 92 P. 674 (1907), where that earlier court after holding that it perceived no error in the controversy it had reviewed on appeal did suggest that, while the court in an action tried without a jury should reject all evidence clearly incompetent and immaterial to avoid encumbering the record, a liberal practice should be adopted in admitting evidence, so that the appellate court, in the event of an appeal, will on a trial de novo have all material facts before it for consideration, and thus avoid the necessity of the cause being remanded for the admission of material evidence which was erroneously rejected. Bell, 368 P.2d at 193. Let it be clearly understood that no criticism is made of what the Washington court repeated from Degginger. That statement is sound and this Court has spoken and rule-written similarly. The rub, and there is for certain a rub, is that the 1962 Washington Supreme Court used that gratuitous and harmless excerpt from Degginger as a springboard for the creation of a rule that in non-jury trials the liberal admission of evidence is encouraged, and that policy is furthered by the presumption on appeal that the trial judge, knowing the rules of evidence, did not consider matters which were inadmissible when making his findings. *715As a result of its own instantly manufactured presumption, the 1962 Washington Supreme Court was able to nimbly and peremptorily dispose of the one hundred twenty-three (123) assignments of error in Bell, which, while it listed them over fifteen pages of fine print, disposed of them eo instanti with its newly created presumption.
That may be the manner in which activist courts choose to act. For me, it is unfortunate that any member of this Court would yield to the temptation of “me-tooing” the Washington court, thus making it hereafter an Idaho rule which on its first day of life engenders the proposition that because of the trial court’s failure to rule on objections, and failure to provide any clues as to how the decision was reached Mr. Powell will remain confined to serve a term for a crime for which there was no properly admitted evidence to sustain a conviction. The district court made it abundantly clear that Mr. Powell is now serving time because of the unacceptable sexual habits of his children, largely when they were not residents of Idaho, and some of which may have been desultory figments of prosecutorial imagination. In essence, it strongly appears that there is a substantial material variance between the charge of the information and the bench verdict of guilty of criminal conduct which was not charged, and which also did not consist of lesser included offenses. The Court today is given the opportunity to satisfactorily answer the well-voiced principles of law which are advanced in the briefs of counsel, which in my view are valid and persuasive; or alternatively, the Court can attempt a rationalized reply which clearly, concisely, and without hedging explains to a candid world how it can pretend that Mr. Powell was given a fair and proper trial, the result of which was only that the verdict is guilty, and you need not know how it was arrived at, and in particular, if the court is wronging you, then the court is sorry.
There is no doubting the sincerity of the trial court in that respect, but the better course by far would have been for this Court to appreciate the trial court’s dilemma in enduring a non-jury trial which resulted in the judge having to assume the responsibility which ordinarily devolves not on one person, but on twelve. A proper resolution of this extraordinary circumstance would be for the trial court to just say “No” and impanel a jury. If there is any statute or case law prohibiting a district judge from so doing, it should be stricken. A trial judge in my view should not be burdened in a criminal trial by being both judge and jury. If judges continue to act as triers of fact, they should make clear, concise, and correct rulings when objections to evidence are made. In that way, this Court will be able to determine on review whether only competent evidence was used by the judge in reaching the verdict.