Court Opinion

ID: 9508310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 21:30:28.192754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:00:15.817708
License: Public Domain

I dissent from the majority's holding that before the trial the defendant in a criminal proceeding must make available to the prosecution a list of witnesses and exhibits expected to be used at trial. To do this is to go one step further to make the government more powerful than its citizens.
Our government was founded as a reaction to the oppressive and tyrannical actions of the British government in the eighteenth century. The founding fathers knew of the abuses of human rights that easily coupled with an overly authoritarian government and sought to protect the citizens of their newly formed nation-state by a recognition of certain inalienable rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Now we seem to be captivated by the idea of efficiency at the expense of safety.
As Justice Black stated in his dissent in Williams v. Florida
(1970), 399 U.S. 78, 112, 26 L.Ed.2d 446, 483, 90 S.Ct. 1893,1912:
"All of these rights are designed to shield the defendant against state power. None are designed to make convictions easier and taken together they clearly indicate that in our system the entire burden of proving criminal activity rests on the State."
He continues:
"[The founding fathers] were well aware that any individual might some day be subjected to criminal prosecution, and it was in order to protect the freedom of each of us that they restricted the Government's ability to punish or imprison any
of us."
Williams, 399 U.S. at 116, 90 S.Ct. at 1914. (dissenting op.).
The effect of the majority opinion is to sacrifice constitutional rights for the sake of "efficient administration of justice." In doing so it gives in to the rhetoric we often hear that the courts are to blame for the increasing crime problem in this country and that only a "hardline" approach by the courts will solve the problem. Whatever the cause of our increasing crime it is not an inefficient judicial or prosecutorial system. In 1985, the prisons in the United States contained twice as many detainees per capita as the United *Page 285 
Kingdom's, four times as many as France's and eight times as many as Portugal's. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Book of the Year
(1986) at 188. Chief Justice Wachtler of the New York Court of Appeals has said in a talk in Montana last July that New York alone has 40,000 prison inmates, up 26,000 from 1975. TheMontana Lawyer, September, 1987, at 3. According to the Annual Report of the Department of Institutions, Montana has increased its prison population by an average of 376 in 1976 to 937 in 1987. Conversation with officials of the Montana Department of Institutions (November 23, 1987). These are not the numbers of an inefficient court system that require citizens to surrender rights for additional productivity.
In any event,
"[T]he Framers decided that the benefits to be derived from the kind of trial required by the Bill of Rights were well worth any loss in "efficiency" that resulted. Their decision constitutes the final word on the subject, absent some constitutional amendment. That decision should not be set aside as the Court does today."
Williams, 399 U.S. at 114, 90 S.Ct. at 1912, (J. Black, dissenting op.). Justice Black accurately predicted how theWilliams holding would be expanded by the state courts to force the defendant to assist in the prosecution of his own case. It is not just the defendant but all of us who have lost ground today in the struggle between state control and individual freedom. *Page 286