Court Opinion

ID: 9861814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:37:45.710473+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:29:07.734320
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
Arterburn, J.
This appeal was fully adjudicated by this court involving the same case and the same parties in State ex rel. Haskett v. Marion County Criminal Court, Division One (1968), 250 Ind. 229, 234 N. E. 2d 636. In that case there was an original action in this court to compel the trial court to expunge an order against the appellant in this case “to answer all questions put to him by physicians and each of them pursuant to statute.” We there denied the writ and authorized the trial court to order him to answer. The same question is presented here a second time in a contempt for refusal to answer these same questions. If there ever is a case of adjudication, I think this is such a case.
In that previous case we considered the constitutionality of the statute authorizing a mental examination of the appellant in a criminal case and whether he was privileged not to answer. We held there that he should answer because the statute specifically granted him immunity from criminal *215prosecution for anything said to the examining physicians and that such evidence could not be used against him in a criminal trial. Statutes granting immunity where testimony is compelled, as before a grand jury, etc., have consistently been upheld and should be in this case.
There is one other point that appears to me to be quite inconsistent in relying upon the United States Supreme Court cases in a proceeding such as this, when that court holds that a juvenile proceeding, although it is not criminal, must conform to certain constitutional provisions relating only to criminal cases. I fail to see what jurisdiction or authority the United States Supreme Court has under our constitution to impose upon proceedings other than criminal proceedings, constitutional rules relating only to criminal proceedings such as that of the Fifth Amendment, which states it applies only to criminal proceedings. A juvenile proceeding or a proceeding to determine whether a person is a sexual psychopath is either criminal or not, and for a court to reach over and give it a quasi character so as to apply constitutional rules of criminal law thereto is indeed an amazing feat of interpretation of a constitutional provision which by its very working applies only to criminal procedure.
For the reasons stated, the judgment should be affirmed.
Givan, J. concurs.
Note.—Reported in 263 N. E. 2d 529.