It is declared, as a matter of legislative determination, that it is necessary to grant subpoena powers in aid of criminal investigations and to provide a method of keeping information gained from investigations secret both to protect the innocent and to prevent criminal suspects from having access to information prior to prosecution.
Utah Code § 77-22-1
Declaration of necessity
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Burns v. Boyden (2006)
Most recently applied in State v. Andrus (May 2025)
Amended by Chapter 296, 1997 General Session
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Utah State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Utah statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.