Court Opinion

ID: 9857072
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 07:14:27.235933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:58.032610
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
My purpose in writing separately is twofold: First, it is to commend Judge Transtrum for making the extra effort and taking the extra time necessary to discuss the drastic change in statutory alcoholic beverages law created by the legislature’s 1983 amendment thereof adding I.C. § 23-1010A — Prohibited Acts — Misdemeanors — Revocations, which emasculated the right of a license holder to have the Department of Law Enforcement’s order made subject to judicial review — review which is meaningful.2
Second, my purpose is to give fair forewarning that, because of the well-reasoned views of Judge Transtrum, should the situation which he finds unsavory not be corrected, it may very well be that in the next case which comes before a district judge, and in turn this Court, the Department will be hard pressed to show why I.C. § 23-1010A is not a deprivation of due process of law.
Judge Transtrum very concisely laid out the vice in the system existing since the enactment of I.C. § 23-1010A:
First, this Court is left with the impression that the agency in this case is not only ‘judge, jury and executioner,’ but also ‘policeman and prosecutor’ as well. In this case, the investigation was initiated by an ‘anonymous phone call’ to the effect that the dancers were going to be performing at the petitioner’s lounge in Montpelier. As a result of this call, undercover agents were deployed to the performance. Although it appears that similar performances were held in other locations throughout the state by this group and others, it is unclear how consistently the agency ferrets out such activity.
In addition to potential abuse of discretion and enforcement, the potential for bias on the part of the hearing examiner is noteworthy. The hearing examiner is selected and placed on an approved list by the department, then selected by the attorney for the department on a case by case basis and paid accordingly. Further, findings made by these examiners may be reversed on review only if clearly erroneous. In a closely contested matter it takes no great oracular prowess to foresee the effect of a less than independent examiner, one whose continued use by the prosecuting attorney is less than enhanced by an adverse ruling to the department’s prosecution.
Also distressing is the fact that in these proceedings, the quantum of proof required to revoke a license is not clearly specified in the statutes. Under the former license revocation statutes, where a licensee was not previously convicted of violating an obscenity law, a show cause proceeding before a district judge was available to the licensee. At this show cause proceeding, the burden of proof was on the agency to show a violation of the law by a preponderance of the evidence. I.C. § 23-1039 (1974 repealed 1980). By comparison, the current statute provides that revocation can be ordered ‘upon sufficient proof to the director.’ I.C. § 23-1010A(c).
Thus, the district court reviewing the decision to revoke must affirm the order if it was made ‘upon sufficient proof to the director,’ affirmed by a hearing examiner employed and paid by the agency, and, the court cannot say that the findings are clearly erroneous.
This court is of the opinion that the procedures provided for and the current statutory scheme are unsatisfactory and create a potential for arbitrary enforcement and injustice. Despite these reser*8vations, however, the court is constrained by the provisions of I.C. § 67-5215 to affirm the order of revocation.
Memorandum Decision and Order, 4-6.
The heart of Judge Transtrum’s critical lament on the 1983 change in procedures is quite evident, and it is frightening when one considers that what the legislature did in this area of private enterprise may also find its way into many other areas. As Judge Transtrum has pointed out, under procedures prior to the 1983 amendment the review was a judicial review conducted by a district judge. District judges are wholly nonpartisan, meaning not just that they are elected on a nonpartisan ballot, but that they are wholly independent, beholden to no person or agency, including the various state agencies, one of which is the Department of Law Enforcement.
Under the present situation the director of the Department of Law Enforcement makes his own decision as to who he hires to be his “judicial” hearing officer. Thereafter, under the new scheme, district judges are allowed to review the handiwork of the director’s hearing officer, but their function is greatly circumscribed because the director has concluded that his hearing officer has indeed gathered together “sufficient proof.” I.C. § 23-1010A(c). Compounding that nice arrangement, because the Prohibited Acts of § 23-1010A, parts (a)(1), (2), (3), (4) and (5), can also be the basis for a misdemeanor prosecution, part (b) of said section obviously contemplates that a jury might be so ill-advised as to find the evidence insufficient to convict and thus acquit a licensee; section (c) makes jury acquittal for insufficiency of the proof of no account in license revocation proceedings when weighed against the director’s (one person’s) finding that the proof submitted to him (by his own designated hearing officer) is sufficient.
What is sufficient to revoke a license, then, is one person’s view, but without the fetters of any legislatively set guidelines as to what is the quantum and quality of proof. The director seemingly stands in shoes similar to those of the chancellor in equity in ye olde English days, where equitable relief was measured out according to the length of the chancellor’s nose.3
Hopefully the legislature may be caused to see what it has done, which includes according no credibility to a jury verdict, preserving no genuine judicial function to a district judge, and placing virtually unbridled power in the director of the Department of Law Enforcement.

. There are no annotations to the section, leaving it reasonably clear that heretofore there has not been a reported case which would disseminate this interesting circumstance to the trial bench and bar and to the general public.

. Parts (b) and (c) of I.C. § 23-1010A are as follows:
(b) A violation of any of the provisions of this section by any agent, employee, or other person in any way acting on behalf of a licensee shall constitute a misdemeanor, and upon conviction such person shall be fined not less than the sum of one hundred dollars ($100) or more than the sum of three hundred dollars ($300), or be imprisoned in the county jail for not less than thirty (30) days nor more than six (6) months, or both such fine or [and] imprisonment. Any court in which a judgment of conviction is entered shall certify a copy thereof to the director, and the director shall thereupon commence administrative proceedings to revoke any license of such convicted person.
(c) Irrespective of misdemeanor violations or other criminal proceedings instituted under this section, upon sufficient proof to the director, the director shall revoke any license of any person found to have committed any of the above proscribed acts. The revocation proceedings shall be in accordance with the procedures established in this act.