Court Opinion

ID: 9563566
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:41:54.795384+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:55.273030
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Justice,
concurring and dissenting:
I concur in Justice Stewart’s opinion. Although I, too, agree that the police interrogation did not violate defendant’s Miranda rights, I believe the majority opinion should make the legal basis of this conclusion more clear for the benefit of the bench and bar. The majority does not connect its holding today to State v. Leyva, 951 P.2d 738 (Utah 1997), the binding Utah law. The majority mentions Leyva only in an easily overlooked footnote. See majority op. n. 6. As that footnote indicates, in Leyva, we decided that a defendant can reinvoke his Miranda rights after waiving them only by making an unequivocal statement of reinvocation. See Leyva, 951 P.2d at 743. Under Leyva, the only relevant inquiry is whether the statement was unequivocal; anything less than an unequivocal statement will not suffice. Thus, in the present case, we need only determine whether a request to speak with a prosecutor is such an unequivocal reinvocation.
I emphasize that the majority’s holding does not change the rule articulated in Ley-va; it merely determines one kind of request that is not an unequivocal statement of rein-vocation. I agree that it was not, and that disposes of defendant’s claim here.
I also join in Justice Russon’s opinion to the extent that it dissents from part III of Chief Justice Howe’s opinion, which holds that the trial judges abused their discretion in sentencing Galli to serve consecutive sentences. I agree with Justice Russon that the trial judges have the statutory discretion to impose consecutive sentences. This discretion is broad, as it should be. Unlike the trial court, we have only a cold record before us. And also unlike the trial court, we have relatively little experience with the sentencing functions. The only situations in the past where we have found trial judges to have abused their discretion were instances in which the consecutive sentences were grossly disproportional. See State v. Smith, 909 P.2d 236, 244-45 (Utah 1995); State v. Strunk, 846 P.2d 1297, 1301-02 (Utah 1993). We should adhere to that standard. This case does not begin to meet the standards we have previously set for an abuse of discretion. An examination of the majority’s reasoning shows that it has simply substituted its judgment for the trial judges’; it has given their decisions no deference.
In substance, this court is simply redeeid-ing the consecutive sentence question on what amounts to a correctness basis. We should remember that we are only an appellate court, not trial judges. We each have distinctive jobs. We should remain within our own preserve and not poach on a trial judge’s territory no matter how appealing non-record facts may make that poaching in a particular instance.