Court Opinion

ID: 9543164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:42:47.484982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:09:48.595833
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(concurring).
I concur, and so doing, point out that the defendant has now had three tries (and I don’t know how many more in the federal courts) — , two of which virtually were du*8plications of the first, which latter was reported by unanimous opinion in 28 Utah 2d 96, 440 P.2d 968 (1972), wherein we sustained a first-degree murder verdict and judgment on evidence that pointed up the fact that defendant, in a rather suspicious scenario with the mother of a 22-month-old male toddler, born to a previous paramour, killed him. In the mothers’ absence, — so the jury concluded, Gee had something to do with some second or third-degree burns on the child’s foot which a qualified physician opined were occasioned by a “vehicle cigarette lighter.” More so, and painfully so, similar burns appeared on the “tops of his toes and feet.” The mother, having left the infant sleeping fully clothed in a crib, returned home and was greeted by the defendant holding the baby, “unconscious,” “clad only in a shirt.” The other recitation of facts, so appalling as almost to belie belief, was to the effect that defendant was seen to have carried the child downstairs by the ears, hitting its head against the stair railing.
The defendant thereafter, in 1973, put the State and taxpayers to some more expense by pursuing an extraordinary writ in the nature of coram nobis based on a fantastic claim that a woman juror in a ladies restroom was shown a picture of the dead child, — about which, at taxpayers’ expense, this court considerably was concerned, but about which fantasy it was not, — as evidenced in 30 Utah 2d 148, 514 P.2d 809 (1973).
Gee’s third time around, via the habeas corpus route, chanting the same theme song, seems to be frivolous here, but a tribute to distortion of constitutional due process claims and demands.
The defendant three times now uselessly has exhausted his state remedies — twice too much, — and the 22-month-old baby is dead, —and he alive.
Besides, we have said repeatedly that the writ of habeas corpus is not a substitute for an appeal.