Court Opinion

ID: 9628583
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:25:19.581495+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:41.388330
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. I think the decision here is an unprecedented, unsupported and unwarranted saber thrust into the very heart of our Grand Jury system. It amounts to judicial legislation. Aside from its pedantry, it nonetheless bids adieu to that system. What is worse, it desecrates the sacred pledge of secrecy accorded those appearing before the Gi'and Jury to date. At least it could have been prospective in operation rather than retroactive. The erstwhile fountains of information fed by a pledge of nondisclosure henceforth will be dry as bones. If a Grand Jury ever sits again after this decision, it will twiddle its thumbs, perhaps witnessless.
As frequently occurs, do-good statutes and decisions boomerangishly maim those they intend to help. From here on out, if there be a Grand Jury session, which I doubt, any prosecutor worth his salt will advise that body to indict no one at all, giving assurance that prosecution will be conducted by filing of informations after the Grand Jury has gone home. Then the accused will have no access at any time to any testimony given before the Grand Jury.1 It takes no imagination whatever to observe that an accused will not even have the benefit of a transcript of testimony after he goes to trial, — a privilege at least granted to him in State v. Harries.2
The main opinion is somewhat of the fluffy type. It fluffs off not only history and tradition, but also wholesome reasons and the statutes, minimizing the important and magnifying minutiae. All is well, it says, because “truth has nothing to fear from light.”3 Truth may have nothing to fear from light, but to fracture the traditional secrecy of the Grand Jury system prevents that truth from ever basking in such light.
How would the main opinion treat this aphorism in the next case, — where an accused demands to see the confidential records of the District Attorney and the Trial Judge orders them produced? There is as much or more reason why the accused should have such information to prepare for trial as there is here. If we are to be consistent, when such case arrives, we will have to legislate judicially a little more, or a little more judiciously, or else evade the issue altogether.
*359The statute cited in the main' opinion, Sec. 77-19-10, U.C.A.1953, calling for secrecy, most clearly militates against the novel construction placed on it in this case. There are only two reasons set forth therein justifying any excursion into the Grand Jury domain. One allows- disclosure of testimony of a witness before the Grand Jury, if he, himself has been charged with perjury. Not the case here. The other calls for an order of disclosure “for the purpose of ascertaining whether it is consistent with that given by the witness before the court.” Not the case here. There is no possible way such language can be made malleable enough to mean anything else than that such disclosure must be at some time after trial has begun and after a witness has been sworn and has testified— as in tlie Harries case.
In this connection it seems unfortunate and somewhat unfair for the main opinion to create the impression that the Harries case supports this decision, by lifting from context the statement that a “defendant is not entitled to inspect a copy of the transcript before trial as a matter of right,” —thus hinting that if he requests the transcript he can get it. The main opinion conveniently omits the real holding in that case wherein it was said:
“It has always been the policy of the law that the investigations and deliberations of a Grand Jury should be behind closed doors and that the results of its labors should not be disclosed.”
And again:
“The quoted sections4 establish that the legislature only intended to lessen the tension of the common law rules to the extent of making a transcript available to the defense for impeachment ptcrposes.”
It goes without saying that there can be no impeachment unless there is a trial at which a witness has been sworn and has testified.
The court further made it crystal clear that, even though there might be a rare situation where disclosure could be had before trial, a strong showing of necessity would have to be made, not simply a motion made based on the assertion that it was necessary to prepare for trial, (the identical motion made in the Harries case) when it said:
“If use of the transcript is limited to impeachment purposes, then defendant could not make a claim of contradictory stories until a witness who had appeared before the Grand Jury had testified in the trial of the cause. Until that time there could be no showing made that there were variances in the testimony of any witness on the two occasions. In the present action there was nothing disclosed to the trial judge *360prior to the time the trial commenced which woüld require him to exercise his discretion .in favor of the defendant. When the witness Lack completed his direct examination and cross-examination suggested uncertainty in his testimony, the transcript was made available to the defendant.” 5
Many witnesses appearing before grand juries never may he called to testify at trials after indictments are returned, yet under this decision and its amplifications, what those witnesses may have said could be carried around in the heads of some lawyers who might not treat such information as scrupulously as we are sure it will be treated here. Many times one who has been indicted will plead guilty to a lesser offense on the eve of a trial, obviating the necessity for any testimony at all. Yet, under this decision, he and his counsel will have acquired the testimony of a witness given in secret under a pledge of nondisclosure.
I challenge anyone to point out any difference between this case and the Harries case. The motions to obtain a transcript were identical, yet the defendant was not permitted to have a transcript of testimony in that case until the witness before the Grand Jury was called and testified at the trial.
I challenge anyone to demonstrate where the defendant will be denied any fundamental right if he is permitted to obtain a transcript of the testimony of a witness at the trial, but not before. They didn’t seem to have any trouble with the procedure in the Harries case which permitted disclosure only at the trial and after the witness whose testimony was sought to be impeached, had testified. The only reason given in the main opinion for disclosure of the secret testimony before trial is that to deny it would make it “cumbersome” and “difficult” to compel counsel to wait until the witnesses had testified before giving him a transcript of the testimony. Such a reason did not seem to impress the trial judge in the Harries case. Such a reason, in my humble opinion, is nothing short of jurisprudential naivete, and no such reason ever has been ventured by this court in justification of an incursion into the Grand Jury room.
The main opinion concedes that Grand Jury proceedings historically have been secret. It assigns five reasons justifying that secrecy, only to desert them. It reasons that after an indictment is returned and the defendant arrested, the reason for secrecy disappears, except as to two of the reasons given. One of those is that secrecy will avoid giving defendants an opportunity *361to fabricate perjured defenses. This, says the opinion ever so lightly, has very little or no validity. No other authority on the subject shares such nonchalance. To look askance at such possibility or probability is to ignore reality and to discount completely the human equation.
The tribute paid to human rights and those of the accused by the main opinion have no place in this case. The main opinion concedes that the defendant has no absolute right to read the testimony, and I am of the opinion that someone should say a word or two for the community and the citizens who do not get into trouble and who are entitled to be protected against predatory practices.
The majority opinion leaves to the discretion of the trial court in each case, the matter of whether a transcript of testimony of Grand Jury witnesses will be furnished to the defendant before trial. Such a rule leads to the most ridiculous of results, (as ridiculous as the Harries case denying disclosure, while this case grants it on identical motions) to such extent that where two persons are charged with the same crime, one may be allowed to take a look-see into the Jury Room by one judge, while the other will be denied the same privilege by another but less solicitous judge. It has always been my impression that all accused persons should be accorded the same treatment, but it is perfectly obvious the variety of justices or injustices engenderable from the rule sired by the main opinion.
From time immemorial the proceedings of Grand Juries have been shielded in secrecy, to the end that grand jurors themselves have been sworn to it,6 and many good wholesome reasons have been assigned therefor,7 including those adverted to in the main opinion. The system seems to have worked all right. Since Grand Juries have been impanelled here, such secrecy has remained inviolate save for the exception fashioned in the Harries case. To date none has championed the extent to which this case goes, and there is no statutory or decisional law to support it.
For the main opinion to cite Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. United States, and State ex rel. Clagett v. James in an effort to support its conclusion, indulges in what this writer considers an unfair and inaccurate reporting of those decisions. In the Glass case the court decided the defendant could not obtain a transcript of testimony before the grand jury. Even so, the case was based specifically on a special statute that permitted a “juror, attorney, interpreter *362or stenographer” to disclose matters occurring before the grand jury, “only when so directed by the court preliminarily to or in connection with a judicial proceeding.” 8 We have no counterpart in our statutes, and I invite anyone to point out any Utah legislation that specifically, or even by employment of the wildest kind of inference, comes close to the legislation permitting the disclosure in the Glass case,- — which disclosure was denied, even in spite of the legislation permitting it.
In the Clagett case, the defendant had been indicted himself by the Grand Jury for perjury. Had the defendant in our instant case been indicted for perjury as was the case there, there is sanction in the Utah statutes themselves for disclosure in such case, — a statute actually quoted in the main opinion, — when, under Sec. 77-19-10, U.C.A.1953, it provides that disclosure may be made 1) “for the purpose of ascertaining whether it is consistent with that given by the witness before the court,9 or 2) to disclose the testimony given before the grand jury by any person upon a charge against such person for perjury, in giving his testimony, or upon upon his trial therefor.” It is perfectly obvious the Clagett case is no authority for the case here. Furthermore, that case hails from Missouri, where a statute specifically authorizes the defendant to take depositions of the witnesses before a Grand Jury or elsewhere.10
This decision no doubt will discourage appearances before Grand Juries. This decision will result in destroying a defendant’s opportunity to obtain a transcript of a grand jury witness’ testimony at the trial, since the Grand Jury, protecting its erstwhile status as a secret agency, and in protecting those appearing before it, simply will gather the information but will fail of indictment, leaving the course of procedure to be handled by way of information. This decision will impress those who already have appeared before the Grand Jury, as being the subject of sales down the river. The writ should be made permanent.

. Sec. 77-19-9, U.C.A.1953, provides for preparation of a transcript only in those cases where an indictment is returned.

. 118 Utah 260, 221 P.2d 605.

. Quotation from Ex parte Welborn, 1911, 237 Mo. 297, at page 305, 141 S.W. 31, at page 34.

. The identical sections relied on by the main opinion here.

. In this case “there was nothing disclosed to the trial judge prior to the time the trial commenced which would require him to exercise his discretion in favor of the defendant.”

. Goodman v. United States, 9 Cir., 108 F.2d 516, 127 A.L.R. 265.

. Meyers v. Second Judicial District Court, 1945, 108 Utah 32, 156 P.2d 711; United States v. Kirkwood, 5 Utah 123, 13 P. 234; Goodman v. United States, supra.

. Fed.Rules of Crim.Proc. Rule 6(e) 18 U.S.C.A.

. Obviously for impeachment purposes after a witness has testified at a trial.

. Missouri Revised Statutes, 1949, Sec. 545.400, V.A.M.S.