Court Opinion

ID: 9863802
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 05:54:15.69064+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:04:19.712349
License: Public Domain

SILAK, Justice,
joined by BISTLINE, Justice, dissenting.
The Court’s decision today compellingly demonstrates why Idaho Criminal Rule 25(a) needs to be substantially revised. As it is presently written and is today interpreted by the Court, I.C.R. 25(a) is readily susceptible to abuse by any party who litigates with great frequency in a single judicial district. I write separately both to explain my disagreements with the Court’s reasoning, and to suggest that the rule be rewritten.
The relevant portion of I.C.R. 25(a) provides as follows: “A motion for disqualification without cause shall not be made under this Rule to hinder, delay or obstruct the administration of justice.” The Court holds that this prohibition is nothing more than cautionary language. I do not believe that to be the case. Rather, I believe the language was included as a very important safety valve to prevent exploitation of the disqualification process.
The Court’s explanation as to why no discretionary act is involved in ruling upon a motion under I.C.R. 25(a) is supported by circular reasoning. The Court states that no judicial discretion is implicated because “any motion brought in conformity with the rule must be granted as a matter of right.” Of course, that argument revolves upon itself when examined to discern how, in the first instance, any determination that a motion is not brought to “hinder, delay or obstruct the administration of justice” could ever take place. The plain language of I.C.R. 25(a) necessarily requires that the involved judge decide whether or not a disqualification motion is being filed for a forbidden purpose. By definition, that decision-making process implicates judicial discretion. Therefore, here the Court should have concluded that the writs of mandate and prohibition were unavailable on the basis of the “discretionary act” exception. See Bopp v. City of Sandpoint, 110 Idaho 488, 490, 716 P.2d 1260, 1262 (1986) (“writs of mandate (and their counterpart, prohibition) will not issue to compel the performance of a purely discretionary function”).2
*221Because the Court has decided that the right to disqualification under I.C.R. 25(a) is absolute, it does not proceed to provide proper criteria to guide a judge in deciding whether a motion to disqualify is brought to “hinder, delay or obstruct the administration of justice.” In dissenting from that conclusion, I offer a framework that I believe is the proper interpretation of I.C.R. 25(a) and which ought to be made explicitly so through revision of the rule.
I agree with the Court that Bower’s motions were not an attempt to influence Judge Morden’s future rulings on issues of law because, if granted, Judge Morden would be removed from all of Bower’s cases. However, I believe we must look beyond that point to measure the systemic damage that “blanket” disqualification motions such as these can cause.
In State v. City Court of the City of Tucson, 150 Ariz. 99, 722 P.2d 267 (1986), the Arizona Supreme Court was confronted with a similar situation and analyzed the broader impacts of blanket disqualification motions. In City of Tucson, the court held that a prosecutor’s policy of having deputy prosecutors disqualify certain judges under a rule similar to Idaho’s was an abuse of the rule because it was an attempt to intimidate all of the judges, not just those targeted for disqualification. This rationale has application here. Even if Bower filed blanket motions against Judge Morden and refrained from filing any disqualification motions against other magistrate judges so that Judge Morden was never the reassigned judge in any case of Bower’s, the other magistrate judges would still be put on notice that if their rulings should become less acceptable to Bower than those of Judge Morden, Bower has the power to redirect his blanket motions and remove an individual judge from the criminal bench. That possibility exposes the separation of powers violation underlying this entire dispute.
I disagree with the Court’s conclusion that Bower’s blanket motions are not an invasion of the judiciary’s power. Article 5, § 2 of the Idaho Constitution does invest this Court with exclusive power to administer and supervise the judiciary. Therefore, Bower is not constitutionally authorized to use disqualification motions in such number so as to effect the functional equivalent of a reassignment of a magistrate judge (an objective Bower openly conceded).3
On the basis of the above considerations, the Court should have concluded that blanket disqualification motions of this type are an obstruction of the administration of justice within the meaning of I.C.R. 25(a) and proceeded to supply some definition of “blanket” in order to provide guidance for the future. The district court did attempt to do that by directing that Bower was permitted to file disqualification motions only in “selected cases for perceived bias.” If that phrase is understood to mean only selected cases in which Bower perceives bias by Judge Morden based on the specific facts of the case, then the standard becomes a “quasi-cause” standard that takes away the peremptory challenge characteristic that I.C.R. 25(a) was designed to provide. Moreover, given that the motions need not state a basis for disqualification, any attempt to invoke disere*222tion by Judge Morden employing this standard would be mere speculation as to whether a particular case was more of the type that Bower wanted him removed from than any other.
I believe a more balanced construction would be one that allowed Bower to disqualify Judge Morden from as many cases as he chooses, so long as it is not grossly disproportionate to the number of motions filed against other magistrate judges. Such a standard would allow Bower to disqualify Judge Morden without potential for improperly influencing other magistrate judges. Additionally, it would also constrain unlimited disqualification to the extent that a litigant filing disqualification motions should receive a judge as a reassignment judge approximately as many times as the judge is disqualified by the litigant from other cases.
I also conclude that Judge Morden’s practice of issuing blanket denials without any type of hearing4 was an abuse of discretion because he failed to utilize any discretion by denying all of the motions without considering whether under I.C.R. 25(a) Bower was entitled to disqualify him from some cases. By this I do not mean to suggest that Judge Morden must rule in a vacuum such that he cannot look beyond an individual motion and examine Bower’s disqualification pattern. When a judge is faced with blanket disqualification motions, the exercise of discretion occurs in a larger context than the individual motion, for the judge should evaluate the pattern of blanket motions and act upon them collectively after a hearing. At that point, a judge ought tó be able to deny enough of the motions to maintain or restore approximate equilibrium to the administrative assignment of cases.
For the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the order of the district court in part, reversing only those portions indicated herein.

. Because I believe the writs should not issue against a discretionary function, it is unnecessary for my analysis to determine whether Bower has an adequate appellate remedy for review of a disqualification decision under I.C.R. 25(a). Nevertheless, I do agree with the Court that none exists for Bower and I would not advocate revising I.C.R. 25(a) to create one. The peremptory *221disqualification of a judge without cause under I.C.R. 25(a) is similar to the peremptory disqualification of a potential juror. That process is similarly subject to discretionary decision-making in limited instances of abuse such as impermissible challenges based on race or gender, decisions for which there is no corresponding right to interlocutory appellate review.

. The importance of these separation of powers concerns has been recognized in People v. Wharton, 136 Ill.2d 423, 144 IlI.Dec. 786, 556 N.E.2d 253 (1990). In Wharton, the Supreme Court of Illinois concluded that a prosecutor who was using multiple disqualification motions against a single judge would be unconstitutionally invading the administrative duties of the judiciary if his goal was to effect a reassignment of the undesirable judge.
These separation of powers principles are equally important under the Idaho Constitution. Although the office of prosecuting attorney is a "quasi-judicial" position pursuant to Article 5, § 18 of the Idaho Constitution, it is also one charged with the performance of "executive functions.” See State v. Wharfield, 41 Idaho 14, 17, 236 P. 862, 863 (1925). Therefore, the separation of powers principles established in Article 2, § 1 of the Idaho Constitution must be understood to prohibit a prosecuting attorney from appropriating the judicial administrative powers exclusively granted to this Court in Article 5, § 2.

. The right to some type of abbreviated hearing necessarily corresponds with the recognition that ruling on a disqualification motion under I.C.R. 25(a) is a discretionary function. At the point that the issue of abuse is raised by the court or the opposing party, some opportunity to be heard is appropriate.