Caton v. State

• Decision Date: 25 November 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-256,84-256
• Parties: Patrick M. CATON, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Page 1260

709 P.2d 1260

Patrick M. CATON, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).

No. 84-256.

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

Nov. 25, 1985.

Gerald R. Mason of Mason & Twichell, Pinedale, for appellant (defendant).

A.G. McClintock, Atty. Gen., Gerald A. Stack, Deputy Atty. Gen., Mary B. Guthrie (argued), and John W. Renneisen, Sr. Asst. Attys. Gen., for appellee (plaintiff).

Before THOMAS, C.J., and ROSE, ROONEY, BROWN and CARDINE, JJ.

CARDINE, Justice.

In a trial to the court, Patrick Caton was convicted of aggravated homicide by vehicle. His appeal of the conviction presents three questions which we must determine. First, was he denied a speedy trial? Second, does the vehicular homicide statute under which he was convicted apply when the victim is a pedestrian? ¹ And, finally, is that statute unconstitutionally vague?

We affirm.

FACTS

On July 10, 1983, a police officer observed appellant speeding within the Pinedale town limits. The officer stopped appellant and ordered him out of his pickup truck. Rather than complying with the order, appellant drove off and a chase began.

The officer stated that the chase started with appellant at least a block and a half ahead of him. The officer said that he allowed the gap to widen to avoid a dangerous situation, and, at the end of the chase, the gap between the two vehicles was about four blocks. An eyewitness to the chase, Ross Hocker, contradicted the officer's version of the incident, stating that the two cars were separated by only one to three car lengths at one point in the chase.

The chase ended with appellant's pickup truck going off the road at a curve and hitting a gatepost which John Coryell, an innocent bystander, was either on or climbing over. Coryell was killed. There is no dispute over the fact that appellant, at the time, had a blood alcohol level exceeding .10 percent. ²

A criminal complaint was filed on July 19, 1983, charging appellant with a violation of the aggravated vehicular homicide statute, § 6-2-106(b), W.S.1977. The appellant provisionally waived a preliminary hearing and was immediately bound over to the district court. On August 8, 1983, the district court certified to this court the question of the constitutionality of the vehicular homicide statute. Citing State v. Rosachi, Wyo., 549 P.2d 318 (1976), we declined to issue an advisory opinion and remanded the case to the district court on August 31, 1983.

The case then began a tortuous course which resulted in the filing of three different informations and numerous changes of venue from Sublette County to Teton County and back to Sublette County again. Eventually a trial took place on August 29, 1984, over a year after the homicide. Because a substantial speedy trial issue is raised, we must detail the relevant procedural steps.

After our August 31 remand, little occurred until October 28. On that date, the district court set the trial for January 25, 1984, and ordered that a preliminary hearing be held within a month. Before the preliminary hearing could be held, however, the prosecutor decided that the vehicular homicide statute might be unconstitutional and filed a complaint charging the appellant with involuntary manslaughter. The preliminary hearing was held on November 28 on the manslaughter charge. The vehicular homicide information remained pending.

The parties appeared before the district court on December 22 to argue a motion by the defendant to dismiss both the manslaughter and vehicular homicide informations, the latter on speedy trial grounds. The district court dismissed the vehicular homicide information and ordered that the case proceed under the manslaughter statute.

The prosecutor next received an unpublished opinion from the attorney general suggesting that he was charging the appellant under the wrong statute. A motion was filed seeking dismissal of the manslaughter information and allowing a refiling of the vehicular homicide charge. The court set a hearing on that motion for January 24, and the trial was postponed.

The appellant had subpoenaed his chief witness, Ross Hocker, for the January trial date, but after learning of the postponement, advised Hocker that he need not appear. The appellant later was unable to subpoena Hocker and lost his witness.

At the January hearing the appellant again raised his speedy trial objections. The district court ruled that the defendant had not been prejudiced, that the State had proceeded with all due diligence, and, therefore, the appellant's right to a speedy trial had not been violated. The trial on the vehicular homicide charge was set for April 2.

Between January and March there was a preliminary hearing on the vehicular homicide charge and thereafter an arraignment. On March 7 the trial was again delayed when the appellant, the prosecutor, and the district court agreed to move the trial to August 29, pending the outcome of plea negotiations.

The case was tried to the court on August 29, 1984, the appellant having waived his right to a jury trial. Pursuant to stipulation, all of the testimony, including that of Ross Hocker, was summarized and presented to the court in that form. On the only disputed issue, the court found that the homicide was proximately caused by the appellant's drunk driving rather than by the alleged hot pursuit by the police officer. The court sentenced the appellant to a term of five to ten years in the Wyoming State Penitentiary.

SPEEDY TRIAL

Article 1, § 10 of the Wyoming Constitution and the Sixth Amendment to the federal constitution guarantee a speedy trial to the accused. ³ Phillips v. State, Wyo.,

597 P.2d 456, 460 (1979). The same four-part balancing test applies under both the Wyoming and federal speedy trial provisions. Thus, in determining whether a post-accusation delay occurred which necessitates reversal, we look to the length of the delay, the reason for delay, the defendant's assertion of his right to a speedy trial, the prejudice to the defendant, and any other relevant circumstances. Cherniwchan v. State, Wyo., 594 P.2d 464, 468 (1979), citing Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972).

Length of the Delay

The speedy trial period begins to run when the complaint is filed. Estrada v. State, Wyo., 611 P.2d 850, 853 (1980). In this case, the first complaint was filed on July 19, 1983. The speedy trial period was interrupted nineteen days later when, on the agreement of both parties, the district court reserved the constitutional question for our consideration. We remanded the case on August 31, and at that point the running of the speedy trial period commenced again. No further action in the case occurred until the October 28 order by the district court setting trial and providing for a preliminary hearing. There is no indication in the record that appellant was responsible for the delay that occurred between the August 31 remand and the October 28 order. We will, therefore, include that 58-day period in our speedy trial calculation.

From October 28 until January 24, the appellant was under continuous public charge for the homicide. The fact that the vehicular homicide charge was dismissed and supplanted by a manslaughter information (with some overlap) does not affect our speedy trial calculation. United States v. MacDonald, 456 U.S. 1, 102 S.Ct. 1497, 1500, 1502-1503 & n. 12, 71 L.Ed.2d 696 (1982), stated that the periods of formal charge by a single sovereign for the same criminal act are tacked even if the charges are different. We must add the 87-day period from October 28 to January 24 to our delay calculation.

The period of delay was briefly interrupted between January 24, when the manslaughter information was dismissed, and January 26, when a vehicular homicide complaint was refiled. ⁴ The speedy trial clock started again on January 26 and continued until March 7, a period of 40 days. This period of delay was caused by the prosecutor's decision to dismiss the manslaughter charges and refile under the vehicular homicide statute. On March 7, the appellant moved to vacate the April 2 trial setting for plea discussion purposes. Delays for those purposes are excludable, so we will not count any of the period from March 7 until trial. Tageant v. State, Wyo., 683 P.2d 667, 669 (1984). In summary, the net delay totals 204 days or a little over six months.

There is no specific period of delay which by itself causes a speedy trial violation. Phillips v. State, supra, 597 P.2d at 460. In Cook v. State, Wyo., 631 P.2d 5, 11 (1981), we held that Rule 204 of the Uniform Rules of the District Courts of the State of Wyoming, ⁵ which mandates a The most we can say about the delay in this case is that it is sufficient to trigger further analysis of the speedy trial factors, but it is not so outrageous that it should weigh heavily in the final analysis. See Phillips v. State, supra, 597 P.2d at 460, and Estrada v. State, supra, 611 P.2d at 853, in which we found that similar delays merely triggered further analysis.

trial within 120 days after information or indictment, is not exclusive. A violation of this rule is one of the factors to be considered along with the other factors in the balancing test in determining whether the delay violated appellant's speedy trial right. A delay which violates the rule may be justified by the other balancing-test factors in a proper case. Cook v. State, supra at 10.

Reasons for the Delay

The State argues in its brief that the prosecutor had a good reason to cause delay and that the charges were justifiably dismissed and refiled because he "was faced with solving a conundrum which had been haunting legal scholars for some time." Later in its brief, however, the State, contrary to its claim that the statute had been haunting legal scholars, states that the vehicular homicide statute was not vague because, "[a]ny man of common intelligence could read it and conclude that he will be...