Pelley v. State

• Decision Date: 19 February 2009
• Docket Number: No. 71S05-0808-CR-446.,71S05-0808-CR-446.
• Citation: 901 N.E.2d 494
• Parties: Robert Jeffrey PELLEY, Appellant (Defendant below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff below).
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

901 N.E.2d 494

Robert Jeffrey PELLEY, Appellant (Defendant below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff below).

No. 71S05-0808-CR-446.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

February 19, 2009.

Stacy R. Uliana, Indianapolis, IN, Attorney for Appellant.

Gregory F. Zoeller Attorney General of Indiana, Gary Damon Secrest, Jodi Kathryn Stein, Deputy Attorney Generals, Indianapolis, IN, Attorneys for Appellee.

On Petition to Transfer from the Indiana Court of Appeals, No. 71A05-0612-CR-726

BOEHM, Justice.

Robert Jeffrey Pelley appeals his convictions for the murders of his father, stepmother, and two stepsisters. We affirm Pelley's convictions. We hold that the Criminal Rule 4(C) period does not include the time for the State's interlocutory appeal when trial court proceedings have been stayed. We also hold that the evidence was sufficient to support the convictions, and the trial court did not err in its challenged evidentiary rulings or in denying Pelley's motion for a special prosecutor.

Facts and Procedural History

In 2007, a jury found Pelley¹ guilty of the 1989 murders of his father, stepmother, and two stepsisters. The convictions were based on circumstantial evidence supporting the State's theory that Pelley, who had been grounded from events connected to his high school senior prom, killed his father in order to attend those activities with his girlfriend, and killed his step-mother and stepsisters because they were present when he killed his father. Pelley was sentenced to consecutive forty-year sentences, for an aggregate sentence of one hundred sixty years. Pelley appealed his convictions, raising four claimed errors:

I. Denial of his motion for discharge under Criminal Rule 4(C) because he was not tried within one year after his arrest due to the State's interlocutory appeal;

II. Insufficient evidence to support the convictions;

III. Admission of certain hearsay statements and exclusion of evidence regarding a third-party motive and the prosecutor's delay in bringing charges; and

IV. Denial of Pelley's petition for a special prosecutor.

The Court of Appeals reversed Pelley's convictions on the first issue and therefore did not address the remaining three. Pelley v. State, 883 N.E.2d 874, 876 (Ind.Ct. App.2008). We granted transfer and affirm the trial court on all four issues. We set out the facts and procedural steps relevant to each issue in the following sections.

I. Interlocutory Appeals and Criminal Rule 4(C)

Pelley argues that Indiana Rule of Criminal Procedure 4(C) entitles him to discharge. That Rule provides that a defendant may not be held to answer a criminal charge for greater than one year unless the delay is caused by the defendant, emergency, or court congestion.² In Pelley's case, the Rule 4(C) period was triggered by his August 10, 2002 arrest, and the period was extended slightly by Pelley's agreement to a continuance.

Trial did not occur within the 4(C) period because of a discovery dispute and the resulting interlocutory appeal. On August 22, 2002, the State issued a subpoena duces tecum to the Family & Children's Center, which provided counseling to the Pelley family in 1988 and 1989. The subpoena directed production of the family's counseling records but did not provide a specific response date. The Center moved to quash the subpoena on February 26, 2003 on the ground that the counseling records were privileged.

The State and the Center submitted memoranda and lengthy arguments at the hearing on the motion to quash. Pelley submitted no written materials but responded orally and was substantively aligned with the Center, except that Pelley alone objected to the trial court's in camera examination of the counseling records. Ultimately, the trial court reviewed the records in camera and granted the Center's motion to quash. The trial court noted that none of the records contained information related "directly to the fact or immediate circumstances" of the murders even under an expansive interpretation of that phrase.

At the State's request, the trial court certified its order for interlocutory appeal, finding that the order involved a substantial question of law and that the State would have an inadequate remedy without the interlocutory appeal. The Court of Appeals accepted the appeal and stayed proceedings in the trial court pending resolution of the appeal. The issue was ultimately resolved by this Court's opinion of June 14, 2005, holding in part that the trial court erred in quashing the subpoena. State v. Pelley, 828 N.E.2d 915, 923 (Ind. 2005). Pelley did not participate in the appeal.

The case was remanded to the trial court, and on October 28, 2005, trial was set for July 10, 2006. Pelley did not object to this trial date. On January 4, 2006, Pelley filed a motion to dismiss under Rule 4(C), arguing that the July 10, 2006 trial date was beyond the one-year period provided by Rule 4(C), and Rule 4(C) does not contain an exception for interlocutory appeals. The State responded that the time for the interlocutory appeal should be charged to the defense or court congestion, and the stay prevented the State from acting during the appeal. The trial court denied Pelley's motion, finding that although Pelley did not cause the delays incident to the interlocutory appeal, the Criminal Rule 4(C) period was tolled during the appeal. The trial court also noted that the stay issued by the Court of Appeals "preclud[ed] the trial court from exercising jurisdiction," and assumed that "the Appellate Court was aware that such stay would, interfere with observance of the Defendant's C.R. 4(C) Rights." Pelley requested, and the trial court denied, an interlocutory appeal of this order. Pelley then brought an original action in this Court for writ of prohibition and writ of mandamus. We denied his petition without an opinion.³

Pelley's trial began July 12, 2006. The State did not seek to introduce the counseling records, or anything derived from the records. The jury found Pelley guilty of all four murders. Pelley appealed his convictions and argues that he was entitled to discharge under Rule 4(C).

A majority of the Court of Appeals reversed Pelley's convictions, holding that discharge was required because Rule 4(C) contains no exception for interlocutory appeals, and Pelley was not responsible for the delay. Pelley v. State, 883 N.E.2d 874, 885 (Ind.Ct.App.2008). Judge Friedlander dissented, reasoning that the delay for the interlocutory appeal was excluded from the 4(C) period as a form of emergency or court congestion. Id. at 887-88. The only question is whether Rule 4(C) excludes the time for the State's interlocutory appeal from its one-year limitation. This issue is one of law which we review de novo.

A defendant extends the one-year period by seeking or acquiescing in delay resulting in a later trial date. Vermillion v. State, 719 N.E.2d 1201, 1204 (Ind.1999). A defendant waives his right to be brought to trial within the period by failing to raise a timely objection if, during the period, the trial court schedules trial beyond the limit. Id. However, a defendant has no duty to object to the setting of a belated trial date if the setting occurs after the year has expired. Morrison v. State, 555 N.E.2d 458, 463 (Ind.1990), overruled on other grounds by Cook v. State, 810 N.E.2d 1064, 1067 (Ind.2004). As a result of these rules, if the time for interlocutory appeal is excluded from the Rule 4(C) period, then Pelley waived his claim by failing to object to the July 10, 2006 trial setting because the one-year limitation had not expired when that trial date was set. On the other hand, if the time for interlocutory appeal is included, the one-year limitation had long passed when the trial date was set, and Pelley's discharge was required notwithstanding his failure to object.

This Court has previously examined the effect of the State's interlocutory appeal on the period in which a defendant must be brought to trial. In Martin v. State, 245 Ind. 224, 228, 194 N.E.2d 721, 723 (1963), the State filed a mandamus proceeding following the trial court's denial of the State's motion for a change of judge. During the course of the mandamus action, the statutory time limit—then framed in terms of court⁴ — expired. The defendant moved for discharge, arguing that the time for the State's mandamus proceeding could not be attributed to him. We upheld the trial court's denial of the discharge motion, in part because the defendant was the real party in interest in the change of judge, and his attorneys represented the respondent judge in the original action. Id. at 229, 194 N.E.2d at 724. We also stated that the three-term statute did not apply "where the delay was caused by proceedings in this court." We explained that neither the prosecutor nor the trial judge could control the time required for an appeal, and most appeals would trigger a dismissal, a result that the legislature could not have intended. Id. Following the adoption of our criminal rules, we quoted Martin with approval in State ex rel. Cox v. Super. Ct. of Madison County, 445 N.E.2d 1367, 1368 (Ind.1983), in holding that Rule 4(B)'s early trial requirement was tolled pending the State's interlocutory appeal of the trial court's ruling on defendant's motion in limine.

We believe that Martin's rationale controls here. When trial court proceedings have been stayed pending resolution of the State's interlocutory appeal, the trial court loses jurisdiction to try the defendant and has no ability to speed the appellate process. As a practical matter, applying the Criminal Rule 4(C) one-year requirement to interlocutory appeals would render an appeal by the State impossible because it would in all likelihood trigger a mandatory discharge of the defendant. Accordingly, we conclude that Rule 4(C)'s one-year limitation does not include the time during which trial proceedings have been stayed pending interlocutory appeal.

We note that...