Court Opinion

ID: 9558355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:08:22.733654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:08:58.884518
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Chief Justice,
concurring in part and concurring in the result:
I join only in the last two paragraphs of section III.B.2 of Justice Durham’s opinion, discussing the United States Supreme Court case of Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 97 S.Ct. 2861, 53 L.Ed.2d 982 (1977) (plurality). I would strike the statute as violative of the United States Constitution. If, as the State argues, the United States Supreme Court has not adopted a per se rule precluding the death penalty in situations where no killing is involved, then I am content to have that Court tell us so in no uncertain terms. Until then, I must be guided by the results of the Supreme Court’s cases, such as Coker and Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137, 107 S.Ct. 1676, 95 L.Ed.2d 127 (1987), and what few clear and consistent statements they contain. I read these cases as barring the death penalty in the cases before us. I decline to divine some more subtle lesson from the entrails of those contorted death penalty opinions.
Having concluded that the statute is viola-tive of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, I would not reach the Utah constitutional issues dealt with by Justice Durham so sweepingly and at such length. These issues were inadequately briefed before this court, as Justice Durham effectively concedes. See State v. Lafferty, 749 P.2d 1239, 1247 n. 5 (Utah 1988), habeas granted sub nom. Lafferty v. Cook, 949 F.2d 1546 (10th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 911, 112 S.Ct. 1942, 118 L.Ed.2d 548 (1992).