Court Opinion

ID: 9580681
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:07:31.727486+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:26.365050
License: Public Domain

ELLETT, Chief Justice,
(dissenting).
The opinions of the author in the main opinion regarding appeals by the state, unlike swiss cheese, do not improve with age. His dissent in the case of State v. Davenport1 set forth the law correctly and he should have remained faithful to the correct principles set forth therein and should not have changed his vote simply because this Court heretofore made an error.
There should be a better reason for following an erroneous holding than the idea that once we make an error, it must be perpetuated until the legislature spends its time to correct our mistakes. We should correct our own errors as soon as the occasion arises when we are convinced that an error has been made. I would allow the appeal to stand.
Even if the appeal were not permitted by the constitution,2 the judgment of the district court cannot be allowed to stand. On January 18, 1977, this Court remanded this case to the district court “for further proceedings in accordance with the law.”3 I dissented to the language used in the order of remand and thought we should tell the trial judge what the law was. His Honor, the district judge, was told to proceed in accordance with law. This he failed to do, and we should remand to have him comply with our order.
His failure to act in accordance with the law stems from the fact that the sentence to be imposed upon those guilty of murder *1104and the first degree was death unless the jury trying the case made a recommendation of leniency which was not done in this case. Here, the defendants committed a series of murders, and after the decision in Furman v. Georgia4 was handed down, they appeared on national television and gleefully admitted the killings, stating that they would kill more if and when they got out of prison.
The defendants had been sentenced to be shot, but the execution date was postponed by the United States Supreme Court. The case was remanded by that Court to the Utah Supreme Court to consider the case in the light of Stewart v. Massachusetts.5 Instead of doing that, the majority of this Court simply remanded the matter to the district court.
Since Utah has never had a racial problem (only one black man has been executed in Utah since statehood in 1896), it cannot be said that we are governed by the Stewart or the Furman cases. Therefore, the only lawful penalty to be made is that of death. The trial court should have fixed a new date for the execution if it proceeded according to law as it was directed to do. However, the court did not proceed according to law; it imposed a sentence which cannot be found in the statutes, to wit: life imprisonment.
To follow the main opinion in this case is to let two cold-blooded murderers avoid the lawful sentence that they were originally given. If the state is not permitted to appeal the erroneous sentence imposed, the matter ends here until the defendants seek relief by way of habeas corpus on the ground that there is no penalty under the law for retaining them in prison. It would be better to allow the appeal and have a decision on the matter in the light of the Stewart case as the Supreme Court of the United States requested, than to merely remand for the court to follow the law.
It appears to me that this Court is supinely shirking its responsibility if we let the sentence stand as made. It is no excuse to refuse to stand firm on the principles of this case by saying that the prosecuting attorney can bring more cases of first degree murder against the defendants. We should do our duty, and if any court is to say that the penalty provided by law in this case is invalid and that these killers are to be freed, let it be some court other than our own.

. 30 Utah 2d 298, 517 P.2d 544 (1973).

. Article VIII, Sec. 9 provides: “From all final judgments of the district courts, there shall be a right of appeal to the Supreme Court. . . ”

. Utah, 559 P.2d 543 (1977).

. 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972).

. 408 U.S. 845, 92 S.Ct. 2845, 33 L.Ed.2d 744 (1972).