Court Opinion

ID: 9628378
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:18:14.040167+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:04.913215
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice, dissenting.
With the exposure or cynicism of a life time in the private practice of law, I would have voted to acquit had I been a juror in this case. Likewise, had I been the trial judge, the severe doubts which are engendered about the quality of the testimony of the principal complainant would have engendered at least serious consideration of a judgment notwithstanding the verdict and more precisely for a new trial. In real world terms, this case accommodates the worst in all results and the totality of human tragedy is predictably not yet individually ordained.
Perjury is an ugly word but only too prevalent a fact as any experienced trial attorney comes to know. In consideration of the motion for a new trial on the basis of W.R.C.P. 60(b) for newly discovered evidence, the complainant, at a minimum, should have been blessed with the undeniable virtue of a cross-examined hearing to explain her newly discovered testimony discrepancy.1 A validity reference test on the accuracy of her testimony would hardly reach beyond the first digit of a ten numbered scale. The problem with the denied hearing is that the trial judge can empirically not have the faintest knowledge whether or why she may have lied. The “inconsistencies” casually acknowledged by the majority reveal intrinsically that she did not tell the same story twice, more significantly, after trial testimony and then differently in her interview with the officer responsible for the presentence investigation report. Individually, I would believe that the parole officer with the responsibility for acquisition of knowledge for sentencing would be most realistically reliable to reflect the last stated version of the complaint made by the young lady in order to accommodate her clearly designed search for revenge. It is unfortunate that the majority now denies efficacy to her testimony discrepancies even though the last departure never received jury review exposure.
The non-adjudicatorily defined pragmatism adopted by this court for evisceration *917of the newly discovered evidence concept of W.R.C.P. 60(b) accommodates devaluation to a lifeless cipher without substance in remedial character. What is so shocking to the sense of fairness and justice is that the price for substance in the remedy is only the opportunity for a proper hearing with cross-examination and comparison provided. Story v. State, 755 P.2d 228 (Wyo.1988) (Urbigkit, J., specially concurring); Cutbirth v. State, 751 P.2d 1257 (Wyo. 1988) (Urbigkit, J., dissenting); Keser v. State, 737 P.2d 756 (Wyo.1987) (Urbigkit, J., dissenting). Cf. Frias v. State, 722 P.2d 135 (Wyo.1986) and Matter of Injury to Seevers, 720 P.2d 899 (Wyo.1986).
Lacking justice delivery system authorship as either a fact finding juror or a trial judge, my unquenchable antipathy to this case is derived from the obscenely extended sentences provided to the accused. I find fault not only in the intrinsic severity, but the maximum life time provision which constituted an abandonment of judicial responsibility to the executive department parole board.
Under the circumstances of this case, even if I were to believe the young lady in totality, which I certainly do not, the sentences are intrusively excessive as related to comparable offenses. There is an excellent place for extended sentences such as life and one such deserving recipient after a short incarceration received $5,000 to speak to the Wyoming State Bar about events which, in venality and immorality, constituted the crime of this century as the Watergate rewards for criminality.
Wright v. State, 707 P.2d 153 (Wyo. 1985); Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 103 S.Ct. 3001, 77 L.Ed.2d 637 (1983); and reasoned justice and provided due process cannot countenance these sentences. Contended integrity and asserted fairness need not constrain justice and wisdom. Cf. R. Dworkin, Law’s Empire (1986).
Consequently, I dissent.

. The cross-examination as "‘[t]he age-old tool for ferreting out truth’" was most recently emphasized by Justice Stevens in Perry v. Leeke, — U.S.-, 109 S.Ct. 594, 601 n. 7, 102 L.Ed. 2d 624 (1989) as quoting at length from United States v. DiLapi, 651 F.2d 140, 149-51 (2nd Cir. 1981), cert, denied sub nom. Ladmer v. United States, 455 U.S. 938, 102 S.Ct. 1427, 71 L.Ed.2d 648, cert, denied 455 U.S. 938, 102 S.Ct. 1428, 71 L.Ed.2d 648 (1982) and including a quotation from 5 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1367 (J. Chad-bourn rev. 1974) "calling cross-examination, ‘the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.’ ”