Court Opinion

ID: 9603806
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:09:53.588502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:14.010222
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Associate Chief Justice,
concurring:
I concur in the majority opinion and write only to clarify a point in Justice Durham’s dissenting opinion.
She cites State v. Larocco, 794 P.2d 460, 469 (Utah 1990), as if it were a majority opinion of this Court; it was not. Two justices concurred in the plurality opinion, and I concurred only in the result and not in any statement in the majority opinion. Nor, indeed, did my vote indicate acceptance of the constitutional theory asserted therein. In addition, and more to the point, I think it inappropriate for this Court to use Article I, section 14, the Utah unreasonable search and seizure provision, to attempt to “fine tune” federal constitutional search and seizure law. I may, as do other judges, disagree from time to time with the United States Supreme Court on a particular search and seizure opinion. But in my view, that alone does not justify resorting to Article I, section 14 to achieve a different result. It is easy enough to be a critic of any court’s opinion, and certainly that is so in the area of search and seizure. When two powerful competing interests, such as law enforcement and the right of privacy, always conflict in any given decision, it is easy to assert that resolutions of cases are inconsistent. Perceived inconsistency is not a valid basis for this Court to launch an “independent” development of Article I, section 14 for the purpose of “correcting” federal constitutional law. One untoward consequence of such an approach is to impose two different and possibly conflicting constitutional standards on law enforcement officers with the unintended effect of diminishing, not increasing, protection for rights of privacy.
Having said the above, I am nevertheless of the opinion that Article I, section 14 of the Utah Constitution is indeed an important tool for protecting the rights of Utahns against unwarranted intrusions by government on their privacy interests. We live in an electronic era in which privacy rights are becoming ever more attenuated and increasingly subject to invasion in ways not imagined three or four decades ago. The people of *537Utah, the Utah Constitution, and the social, family, commercial, and religious institutions in this state are not a homogenous part of the rest of the nation. To conclude that would be to deny the uniqueness of this state, its people, and the legal institutions that have grown out of its political, social, and moral foundations. When government power intrudes in a significant way into the privacy rights of Utahns that are not protected by the United States Constitution, this Court certainly should undertake a thoughtful consideration of the application of Article I, section 14.