Court Opinion

ID: 9565174
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:16:20.210263+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:26.620757
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice
(Goncurring):
I concur in the Court’s judgment for the reasons stated in the majority opinion and for the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Hansen v. Owens, Utah, 619 P.2d 315, 317 (1980). The construction that a majority of the Court in Hansen placed upon Article I, Section 12 of the Utah Constitution was justified neither by precedent nor by the meaning that had historically been placed on that provision.
In construing Article I, Section 12 to be essentially a testimonial privilege, as the Court now does, it should be recognized that the privilege extends beyond the compulsion of only oral testimony. Article I, Section 12 establishes a relationship in a criminal proceeding between the accused and the State that prevents the State from extracting confessions or admissions by whatever means it may devise. In short, the State is precluded from requiring an individual to communicate any of his or her thoughts, whether oral or written, that might be incriminating. Thus, the constitutional provision also protects against the *1076compulsory production of private papers that might be incriminating. First Federal Savings and Loan Ass’n v. Schamanek, Utah, 684 P.2d 1257 (1984). Fundamentally, the privilege stakes out an area of personal privacy where the State simply may not enter. In essence, the privilege accords sovereignty to the individual over his thoughts and personal papers.
In my dissent in Hansen v. Owens, I stated that the privilege against self-incrimination applies to both “testimonial and communicative evidence.” 619 P.2d at 319. The landmark federal case on this subject was decided in the previous century by the United States Supreme Court in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630, 6 S.Ct. 524, 532, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886), where the Court in discussing the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution stated:
The principles laid down in this opinion affect the very essence of constitutional liberty and security.... [T]hey apply to all invasions on the part of the government and its employees of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property, where that right has never been forfeited by his conviction of some public offence, — it is the invasion of this sacred right which underlies and constitutes the essence of Lord Camden’s judgment. Breaking into a house and opening boxes and drawers are circumstances of aggravation; but any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man’s own testimony or of his private papers to be used as evidence to convict him of crime or to forfeit his goods, is within the condemnation of that judgment. In this regard the Fourth and Fifth Amendments run almost into each other.
The Court also stated, “And any compulsory discovery by extorting the party’s oath, or compelling the production of his private books and papers, to convict him of crime, or to forfeit his property, is contrary to the principles of a free government. It is abhorrent to the instincts of an Englishman; it is abhorrent to the instincts of an American. It may suit the purposes of despotic power; but it cannot abide the pure atmosphere of political liberty and personal freedom.” Id. at 631-32, 6 S.Ct. at 532-33. The Court further explained, “[W]e have been unable to perceive that the seizure of a man’s private books and papers to be used in evidence against him is substantially different from compelling him to be a witness against himself. We think it is within the clear intent and meaning of those terms.” Id. at 633, 6 S.Ct. at 534. Accordingly, the Court held that “no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself; and we are further of [the] opinion that a compulsory production of the private books and papers of the owner of [the] goods sought to be forfeited in such a suit is compelling him to be a witness against himself, within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, and is the equivalent of a search and seizure — and an unreasonable search and seizure — within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 634-35, 6 S.Ct. at 534-35.
Whether the privilege also acts to prevent intrusion into the body by unnatural means, at least beyond such innocuous intrusions as the insertion of a sterile needle by a qualified technician for the taking of a blood sample, need not now be decided.
Finally, I am constrained to disagree with the majority’s analytical approach in deciding when the privilege is applicable. The majority purports to balance the principles underlying the privilege against self-incrimination against the State’s interest in obtaining information it deems necessary to prosecute for driving while under the influence. Judicial balancing of the constitutional right against the need for the evidence places the very foundation of the constitutional right upon the shifting sands. Balancing of the interests concerned is not only a threat to the integrity of the constitutional right itself, but is also unnecessary. It is unnecessary because *1077the framers of our Constitution have already made the choice for us; there is no balancing to be done. The privilege of a person not to give evidence against himself under Article I, Section 12 is absolute (absent a waiver or the grant of immunity), and our duty is fulfilled when we say as much. I submit that the majority’s analysis lends itself to being used to erode the right that the framers of our Constitution thought essential to a civilized society.