Court Opinion

ID: 9789652
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:39:43.042864+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:23.842623
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Justice
(dissenting):
In affirming the conviction, the majority holds that the defendant’s refusal to take a breathalyzer test was properly admissible at his trial. In so ruling, the Court follows our recent three-to-two decision in Sandy City v. Larson, 733 P.2d 137 (Utah 1987), which held that the admission of the refusal to take the test does not violate the right against self-incrimination contained in article I, section 12 of the Utah Constitution. In Sandy City, I dissented and joined in the persuasive dissenting opinion of Justice Durham. Nothing that has happened in the intervening months has convinced me that the Sandy City ruling was correct. Because the issue presented in Sandy City and in the instant case turns on an interpretation of a provision in the declaration of rights in the Utah Constitution which was designed to protect one of our most fundamental freedoms from unwarranted state intrusion, and since I have a principled conviction that the majority has misinterpreted that constitutional provision, I decline to acquiesce in that interpretation.
DURHAM, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of ZIMMERMAN, J.