Hughes v. State
| Decision Date | 30 March 2021 |
| Docket Number | A21A0025 |
| Citation | 857 S.E.2d 249,359 Ga.App. 243 |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
| Parties | HUGHES v. The STATE. |
Clark & Towne, Jessica Ruth Towne, Lawrenceville, for Appellant.
Penny Alane Penn, District Attorney, Sandra Ann Partridge, Assistant District Attorney, for Appellee.
After a jury trial, Jimmie Hughes was convicted of rape, incest, aggravated child molestation, and two counts of child molestation. The trial court denied Hughes's motion for new trial, and he filed this appeal. Hughes argues that the trial court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the charges against him because the state violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial. We hold that Hughes has failed to show that the trial court abused his substantial discretion. So we affirm.
Hughes was arrested on April 8, 2016. He was indicted almost a year later on March 13, 2017. The indictment charged Hughes with five counts of sexual crimes against his daughter, occurring from April 2004 to March 2008. Two weeks after he was indicted, Hughes filed a demand for speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The case was placed on an August 2017 trial calendar. On August 14, Hughes filed a motion to dismiss two counts of the five-count indictment, arguing that the allegations of those two counts were not sufficient to invoke the statute-of-limitation tolling provisions of OCGA § 17-3-2.1 (a).
He relied on Mosby v. State , 319 Ga. App. 642, 738 S.E.2d 98 (2013), in which we applied the rule that, in order to invoke those tolling provisions, an indictment must allege that the victim was "under the age of 16." Id. at 646 (2) (b), 738 S.E.2d 98. Applying that rule, we held that an indictment alleging that the victim was "a child under the age of thirteen years" failed to invoke the tolling provision. Id. Here, Count 3 of the indictment against Hughes alleged that the victim was "less than 10 years of age." Count 4 of the indictment did not allege any age.
The court considered Hughes's motion to dismiss as a preliminary matter when the case came on for trial on August 21, 2017. The state conceded that the two counts of the indictment were flawed under the authority of Mosby , agreed that the court should grant Hughes's motion to dismiss, and asked for a continuance to correct the error and re-indict Hughes on the two flawed counts.
Hughes opposed the continuance. The state responded that if it were not granted a continuance, then it would appeal the dismissal of the two counts. The trial court granted Hughes's motion to dismiss Counts 3 and 4 and also granted the state's motion for continuance over Hughes's objection, reasoning that a continuance would result in a shorter delay than an appeal and thus better protect Hughes's rights. The court continued the case to the November 13, 2017 jury trial calendar.
The state redrafted the indictment, and the grand jury returned a true bill of indictment on October 9, 2017. The case was set to begin November 13, 2017. That day, Hughes filed a "plea in bar and motion, to dismiss for failure to receive a speedy trial." The trial court denied the motion and the trial proceeded.
At the trial, Hughes's daughter, who was seventeen years old at the time of trial, testified that Hughes sexually abused her from the time she was four until she was eight. The abuse stopped when the victim's parents separated and the victim, her mother, and her sister moved out of the family's residence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. After the trial court denied his motion for new trial, Hughes filed this appeal.
." Henderson v. State , 310 Ga. 231, 234 (2), 850 S.E.2d 152 (2020). The framework for deciding all constitutional speedy trial claims is laid out in Barker v. Wingo , 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972), and Doggett v. United States , 505 U.S. 647, 112 S.Ct. 2686, 120 L.Ed.2d 520 (1992).
Ruffin v. State , 284 Ga. 52, 55 (2), 663 S.E.2d 189 (2008). The analysis has two stages:
[F]irst, the court must determine whether the interval from the accused's arrest, indictment, or other formal accusation to the trial is sufficiently long to be considered presumptively prejudicial. [Second, i]f the delay has crossed this threshold, the court must proceed to a delicate, context-sensitive, four-factor balancing test to determine whether a speedy trial violation has occurred.
Leslie v. State , 301 Ga. 882, 885 (2) (b), 804 S.E.2d 351 (2017) (citations and punctuation omitted). The four factors to be considered in the case of presumptively prejudicial delay are (1) the length of the delay; (2) the reasons for the delay; (3) the defendant's assertion of the right; and (4) the prejudice to the defendant. Heard v. State , 295 Ga. 559, 562 (2) (a), 761 S.E.2d 314 (2014). "We must accept the court's findings of fact if the record contains any evidence to support them, and we will defer to the court's ultimate conclusion unless it amounts to an abuse of discretion, even though we might have reached a different conclusion were the issue committed to our discretion." Id. at 563 (2) (a), 761 S.E.2d 314 (citation and punctuation omitted).
Here, the trial court correctly found—and the state concedes—that the 19-month delay from Hughes's arrest until the date of trial was presumptively prejudicial. See Robinson v. State , 287 Ga. 265, 266 (1) (a), 695 S.E.2d 201 (2010) (). So the trial court properly proceeded to apply the four Barker factors in the second stage of the analysis.
After determining that the delay is presumptively prejudicial so as to trigger application of the four factors of Barker , the length of delay must be reconsidered as the first factor. Ruffin , 284 Ga. at 56-57 (2) (b) (i), 663 S.E.2d 189. "This is because uncommonly long delays have a tendency to compromise the reliability of trials in ways that neither party can prove or, for that matter, identify." Hayes v. State , 298 Ga. App. 338, 341 (2) (a), 680 S.E.2d 182 (2009) (citation and punctuation omitted). The trial court found that the delay was not unreasonably long, but nonetheless weighed this factor slightly against the state since a 19-month delay is presumptively prejudicial. Hughes does not challenge this finding.
The court found that both the state and Hughes contributed to causing the delay. Eleven months of the nineteen-month delay occurred between Hughes's April 8, 2016 arrest and his March 13, 2017 indictment. The court found that the state attributed this delay to the complexity of the charges and the preparation of the charges for grand jury indictment. The court determined that this delay was not deliberate and was not intended to prejudice Hughes. The court added that the preindictment delay was caused, in part, by the parties’ attempts to negotiate a resolution of the charges before Hughes was indicted. See Jenkins v. State , 294 Ga. 506, 512 (2) (b) (2) (iii), 755 S.E.2d 138 (2014) (). So the court weighed those 11 months against the state, but not heavily.
As for the eight-month delay after the March 13, 2017 indictment, the court found that Hughes's trial tactic of filing his statute-of-limitation motion to dismiss the week before the scheduled August 2017 trial contributed to the delay; the state was ready to try the case but Hughes's last-minute filing caused the trial to be delayed. The court found that had Hughes filed his motion to dismiss sooner, the state would have been able to correct the drafting error and Hughes would have been tried in August 2017 as originally scheduled, less than five months after his March 27, 2017 demand. See Jenkins , 294 Ga. at 512 (2) (b) (2) (iii), 755 S.E.2d 138 (); Torres v. State , 270 Ga. 79, 80-81 (2), 508 S.E.2d 171 (1998), overruled in part on other grounds in Roberts v. State , 309 Ga. 639, 640 n. 1, 847 S.E.2d 541 (2020) (); Rackoff v. State , 275 Ga. App. 737, 738 (1) (b), 621 S.E.2d 841 (2005) ().
Balancing all the reasons for the delay, the court determined that the reason-for-delay factor weighed slightly against Hughes. Hughes has not shown that the trial court abused his broad discretion.
The trial court found that Hughes filed his speedy trial demand almost a year after he was arrested and had obtained counsel, a finding supported by the record. It weighed this factor slightly against Hughes.
Hughes argues that this factor should not be counted against him at all because he asserted his right in due course and his motion was not ripe until two defense witnesses had died because until then, there was scant prejudice to Hughes. But the issue of whether Hughes timely asserted his rights does not depend on when Hughes moved to dismiss the charges because of prejudicial delay. Rather, the issue depends on when he asserted his right to a speedy trial. "[T]he accused bears some responsibility to invoke the speedy trial right and put the government on notice that he or she, unlike so many other criminal defendants, would prefer to be tried as soon as possible." Ruffin , 284 Ga. at 62 (2) (b) (iii), 663 S.E.2d 189. Hughes has not shown that the trial court abused his discretion in weighing this factor slightly against Hughes.
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Williams v. State
...that he or she, unlike so many other criminal defendants, would prefer to be tried as soon as possible." Hughes v. State , 359 Ga. App. 243, 247 (3) (b) (iii), 857 S.E.2d 249 (2021) (punctuation omitted). The trial court found that Williams asserted the right to a speedy trial: he filed mul......