Court Opinion

ID: 9630883
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:23:21.682068+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:45.619389
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, Justice,
concurring and dissenting:
I concur with the first paragraph of Justice Zimmerman’s separate opinion. I also concur in the result reached by the lead opinion but cannot join the treatment of Utah constitutional questions contained in section III.B. The opinion purports to accept the principle that it is this court’s obligation to undertake an independent analysis of article I, section 14. It then cites only federal law and early Utah eases that failed to delineate any independent Utah analysis. One result of this treatment is to render the lead opinion’s holding presumptively dependent on federal law: it is reviewable by the United States Supreme Court, and it contains no independent statement of state law. Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1038 n. 4, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 3475 n. 4, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983).
Undertaking an independent analysis of constitutional language and reaching a conclusion similar or identical to that reached by the United States Supreme Court — even borrowing persuasive analytic tools and language — is a far different thing from committing this court to move in lockstep with the federal court on search and seizure questions. We have not committed to do so in connection with other provisions and guarantees in our constitution, including, for example, uniform operation of the laws and equal protection, Mountain Fuel Supply v. Salt Lake City Corp., 752 P.2d 884, 890 (Utah 1988); Malan v. Lewis, 693 P.2d 661, 670 (Utah 1984); freedom of speech and of the press, West v. Thomson Newspapers, 872 P.2d 999, 1018 (Utah 1994); free exercise and establishment of religion, Society of Separationists, Inc. v. Whitehead, 870 P.2d 916, 930 (Utah 1993); the right of self-representation, State v. Lafferty, 749 P.2d 1239, 1247 & n. 5 (Utah 1988); and the privilege against self-incrimination, In re Criminal Investigation, 7th Dist. Ct. No. CS-1, 754 P.2d 633, 645 & n. 14 (Utah 1988); American Fork City v. Crosgrove, 701 P.2d 1069, 1071-72 (Utah 1985). American Fork City provides a useful illustration of my point. In that case, we construed language in article I, section 12 which was similar but not identical to language found in the Fifth Amendment: “The accused shall not be compelled to give evidence against himself’ as opposed to “nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” We undertook an extensive, independent analysis of the scope of the privilege as it was embodied in our constitution and concluded that it was testimonial in nature. Id. at 1072-73. That result, of course, also obtains under a federal analysis, but the fact that it did so was coincidental, not dispositive. Id. at 1073 n. 2. Likewise, in In re Criminal Investigation, 754 P.2d at 645, we undertook an independent, separate analysis of our constitutional privilege, with a parallel analysis of the Fifth Amendment, noting the shared common law roots of both. We specifically emphasized that our holding was “based independently on our state constitution,” id. at 648 n. 16, and pointed out that the similarity of interpretation of the federal and state provisions was due solely to “the extent that the common law defines the privilege.” Id. at 645. We further noted that “when contemporary questions outside the realm of the common law arise, differing federal and state sensitivities or policy objectives may result in different protections.” Id. at 645 n. 14.
The lead opinion argues that uniformity in rules governing law enforcement practices is a superseding value that warrants a lockstep approach in search and seizure cases. While the practical impact of any constitutional construction may be a legitimate factor (see the discussion of public policy issues in American Fork City) in this court’s deliberations, it has never been the only value we honor in constitutional interpretation. In our federalist system, we tolerate countless instances of *1242dual regulation and differences in law, and the lead opinion has cited no convincing authority for the proposition that in this area of constitutional law, we must cede our interpretive function to the federal courts. That is not to say, of course, that we might, as we have in numerous cases, reach precisely the same result under a state analysis as we would under the federal, but it is to say that we should do the work. Therefore, when the lead opinion says, essentially, that Utah’s search and seizure provisions mean whatever the United States Supreme Court says (now or in the future) the federal language means, I must disagree.
Furthermore, I note that the lead opinion misconstrues language in my opinion in Lar-occo and the court’s opinion in Watts. Nothing in either opinion was intended to indicate that inconsistency and confusion in federal constitutional analysis are the only reasons we undertake independent state constitutional analysis. In both cases, it was offered as a reason to do so, but neither case stands for the proposition that such circumstances constitute a sine qua non for fulfilling our obligation to construe the meaning of Utah’s constitution. The numerous cases cited above make it perfectly clear that no such contingent relationship between Utah’s constitution and the federal has been conclusively adopted by this court. In my view, it should never be.