Court Opinion

ID: 9633473
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:48:38.188786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:35.989921
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Justice
(concurring):
I join in the grant of a new trial, and I concur in the opinion of the Chief Justice, except that portion that discusses the sufficiency of the evidence to support a verdict of guilty of first degree murder.
As I see the case, the only evidence that could support a finding of a knowing or intentional killing, the essential element of a first degree murder charge, is the testimony of Ronald Peterson, an inmate at the Utah State Prison, to the effect that defendant said he had killed his son and had gone out to the marina a day before the killing. Absent an advance trip to the site of the disposition of the corpse, all the evidence is equally consistent with an unplanned, accidental killing, and a finding of an intentional killing is nothing more than speculation.
Although we have ordered a new trial so that defendant can place before the jury evidence that Peterson fabricated his testimony in order to receive better treatment from the State, the majority seems to intimate that under our prior decisions, a first degree murder verdict could be upheld if the jury disbelieved Peterson’s testimony, *800something that may occur on retrial. I cannot join in that intimation.
STEWART and DURHAM, JJ., concur in the concurring opinion of ZIMMERMAN, J.