Rufener v. Shaud

This case bears out the evaluation I made of what the Court’s decision actually stands for in the companion case of State v. Stockwell, 98 Idaho 797, 573 P.2d 116 (1977), namely: a violation of defendant’s constitutional rights to due process of law, and a radical realignment of the power structure prescribed by article 1, § 8 of the Idaho Bill of Rights, which interposed a neutral judiciary between the prosecutor-advocate and the accused. As I feared, the true lesson in Stockwell was that this Court, in effect, was putting Idaho magistrates on notice that it would condone whatever judicial…