Bates v. Keating, 81-60
| Decision Date | 15 April 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 81-60,81-60 |
| Citation | 396 So.2d 1172 |
| Parties | Harold Toney BATES, Petitioner, v. The Honorable Richard B. KEATING, as Circuit Judge, in and for the Ninth Judicial Circuit of the State of Florida, Orange County, Florida, Respondent. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Harry W. Carls, III, Public Defender, and Glenn Klausman, Asst. Public Defender, Orlando, for petitioner.
Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Evelyn D. Golden, Asst. Atty. Gen., Daytona Beach, for respondent.
Petitioner seeks a writ of prohibition based on the expiration of his speedy trial time.
Petitioner was arrested for drug trafficking and moved for a continuance to prepare a challenge to the drug trafficking statute. The motion was granted and the speedy trial time was "waived for the period of this continuance." On October 17, 1979, petitioner filed a motion attacking the drug trafficking statute as unconstitutional.
The following day, October 18, 1979, petitioner filed a demand for speedy trial, and his trial was set for December 17, 1979. Due to a conflict with the trial court's trial schedule, the petitioner's trial was reset for December 19, 1979. No order granting an extension of the speedy trial time for exceptional circumstances was rendered.
On December 19, 1979, petitioner moved for discharge on the ground that more than sixty days had run from the date of his demand for a speedy trial. Fla.R.Crim.P. 3.191(a)(2). The trial court denied the motion. Petitioner seeks to have the trial court prohibited from further exercising jurisdiction over him.
While we understand the rationale of Judge Cowart's dissent that prohibition is not a proper remedy, the Florida Supreme Court has already decided that prohibition is a proper remedy when a trial court improperly fails to discharge a defendant whose speedy trial time has expired. Dickoff v. Dewell, 152 Fla. 240, 9 So.2d 804 (1942); Feger v. Fish, 106 Fla. 564, 143 So. 605 (1932). We are obliged to follow that precedent. Hoffman v. Jones, 280 So.2d 431 (Fla. 1973). Indeed, we have done so in previous cases. Gordon v. Savage, 383 So.2d 646 (Fla. 5th DCA 1980); Deiches v. Kaney, 375 So.2d 584 (Fla. 5th DCA 1979).
In the case at hand, the sixty-day period had expired, and no order of extension had been rendered. Therefore, petitioner is entitled to be discharged. State v. Acurse, 347 So.2d 828 (Fla.3d DCA 1977). Accordingly, the writ of prohibition is granted and the case remanded to the trial court with orders to discharge the defendant.
Prohibition GRANTED; REMANDED with directions.
I agree petitioner is entitled to a discharge because of a violation of his speedy trial rule rights. I realize that this and other courts have previously granted prohibition in such instances. However, the common law writ of prohibition is concerned only with preventing a tribunal from exercising jurisdiction it does not have. Here, as in the usual case involving speedy trial rights, there is no question but that the circuit court has both subject matter jurisdiction over the felony charge and jurisdiction over the person. In such cases the trial court has the authority, power and jurisdiction to hear, consider and decide the question presented and that jurisdiction does not terminate with the running of a speedy trial time, a statute of limitation or any other such event regardless of the effect such matters may have upon the rights of the litigant before the court.
Peculiarly a trial court's jurisdiction never depends on any ruling it makes. If it does not have jurisdiction, no ruling it can make can bestow it. Conversely, if it does have jurisdiction it never loses that jurisdiction by merely ruling whether its ruling is correct or not, because a court's jurisdiction to decide a matter always necessarily includes the power to rule erroneously as well as correctly. In many instances an accused is entitled, upon a correct preliminary ruling on a point of law, to be free from the further restraints, concerns and...
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...See, e.g., Durrance v. Rudd, 398 So.2d 1012 (Fla. 1st DCA 1981); Ballard v. Kaney, 397 So.2d 1042 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981); Bates v. Keating, 396 So.2d 1172 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981); In the Interest of M.B. v. Lee, 388 So.2d 1364 (Fla. 5th DCA 1980); State ex rel. Smith v. Nesbitt, 355 So.2d 202 (Fla......
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