While I urgently flip through the local news channels for stories about revolution in Libya, protesting teachers in Wisconsin and our own clowns in the Utah Legislature continuing to whittle away individual liberties and constitutional rights, my lovely bride of 18+ years urgently asked me to Google something for her. You see, an actress named Brittany Underwood has been fired from the daytime soap opera, “One Life to Live” and dammit, she wants, nay, NEEDS to know why. Right now.
Before dutifully running off to the computer in the basement, I did catch a story on Channel 4 news. It seems that the Box Elder County Attorney’s Office paid a private law firm over $1 Million to assist them in prosecuting a 20 year old murder case. A million bucks. Now, every lawyer in Utah who practices criminal law, both defense and prosecution, knows that the Attorney General’s Office assists county prosecutors when they have a tough case, particularly when the big case is in a little county.
We currently have such a case in a sparsely populated county, and the AG sent its best (actually its ONLY) attorney that prosecutes these kinds of cases to assist the local county prosecutors. My erudite and mysterious partner, Sean Hullinger, made the journey, armed with the law and the facts on his side, only to discover that being right doesn’t always translate into being victorious. The judge refused to suppress the evidence, despite the SCOTUS ruling authored by Antonin Scalia, who is oft times revered locally as some sort of saint.
Even the most populous and wealthiest (in terms of total tax revenue) county gets help when needed from the AG. Twenty years ago, I sat in on most of a murder trial where the prosecution was co-counseled by a Deputy Salt Lake DA and an Assistant AG. So why would Box Elder County pay a private law firm a Million dollars? Don’t look to ABC4 for answers; their in-depth investigative journalism is more shallow than a kids’ plastic wading pool.
And while we’re on the subject of the AG, my old law school classmate Mark Shurtleff is pushing hard on two pieces of legislation that may make it easier for law enforcement and prosecutors, but which clearly erode our Constitutional rights. HB 59 seeks to permit cops to arrest an individual for a Class B Misdemeanor NOT committed in the officer’s presence. Another measure sponsored in the State Senate would require special Grand Juries to convene regularly, replacing the current standard of “only when no other means is feasible” to “always unless the Grand Jury is infeasible.” The idea being that the “Star Chamber” of secrecy and removal of any right of confrontation of witnesses or evidence is a great way to run the criminal justice system.
This is truly sad. Despite our flaws, and regardless of how much fun we poke at our little State, the fact is that Utah is far more progressive, reasonable and protective of individual rights when it comes to criminal justice, than most other states. Our State Constitution provides greater protections from unreasonable search and seizure under its Article I, Section 14 than does the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. Our indeterminate sentencing allows for rehabilitation and re-integration in society, rather than having convicts rot forever in prison (see Texas, Florida and even California).
Grand Juries indict people based on little or no evidence, a one-sided presentation by a prosecutor, and in total secrecy. The Mortenson husband and wife who were indicted by one of these special kangaroo grand juries for the murder of the man’s father, turned out to be totally innocent, when the real murderers were discovered after they had spent over four months in jail, and were awaiting trial for a murder they did not commit. Indeed, they were actually victimized by the killers, but did not seem hysterical enough, and that caused the Utah County Attorney to suspect them. Since he couldn’t have passed muster before a judge at a Preliminary Hearing, where the accused have the right to argue that the total lack of evidence against them means the case should be dismissed, he instead sought, and obtained, the corrupt services of a special grand jury.
Folks, if you trade your liberty for a false sense of security, you will lose both, and deserve neither, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin. And to paraphrase Glenn Beck, “that’s what Hitler and the Nazis did.”
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