Court Opinion

ID: 9786199
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 23:50:24.473029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:42.327295
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, Chief Justice,
concurring:
T 62 I am constrained to concur with Justice Parrish's analysis of the application here of the "adjudicated marriage" statute and thus with the result of the majority opinion. I write separately to express my deep misgivings about the due process implications (not raised or briefed in this case) of using a statute designed to create civil Hability for family support to establish the predicate for criminal behavior. Green took calculated and deliberate steps to avoid violation of the bigamy statute. He never attempted to enter into more than one civil marriage at a time, going to great lengths to dissolve, by divorce, one legal marriage before entering into another. In that regard, his behavior differs little from that of many citizens who (for non-religious reasons) set up households with new partners while still legally married to others, and remarry after divorce, if at all. It was only the action of the State, undertaken pursuant to the adjudicated marriage statute, that rendered his behavior criminal. Absent the application of a party for an adjudication of marriage pursuant to the statute, no legal marriage exists, and Green could not have been prosecuted. The analogy to the doctrine of entrapment, where a defendant is caused by agents of the state to commit acts he would not otherwise have committed, seems to me to be very strong. Here, it was only the prosecutors' application for an adjudication of marriage that created the necessary predicate for criminal bigamy, one that Green most probably, given his course of conduct, did not intend to create himself, and may not have even known was possible. Such a result strikes me as, at best, unfair.
T 63 I also note that I find myself generally in agreement with the views on free exercise expressed by Justice Durrant's concurring opinion, and observe that they may have significant relevance should this court be asked to develop its own jurisprudence under the religion clauses of the Utah Constitution. See generally Christine M. Durham, What Goes Around Comes Around: The New Relevancy of State Constitution Religion Clauses, 88 Val. U.L.Rev. 353 (2004) (discussing ways in which state constitutional religion clauses, given their history and language, may afford more hospitable venues to litigants in religious liberty cases).
"[ 64 Justice NEHRING concurs in Chief Justice DURHAM's concurring opinion.