Reyes v. People

• Decision Date: 03 November 2008
• Docket Number: No. 07SC658.,07SC658.
• Citation: 195 P.3d 662
• Parties: Efrain Torres REYES, Petitioner, v. The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Respondent.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

195 P.3d 662

Efrain Torres REYES, Petitioner, v. The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Respondent.

No. 07SC658.

Supreme Court of Colorado, En Banc.

November 3, 2008.

Walter L. Gerash Law Firm, P.C., Walter L. Gerash, James F. Scherer, Denver, Colorado, Attorneys for Petitioner.

John W. Suthers, Colorado Attorney General, Robert A. Chappell, Special Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, Attorneys for Respondent.

Justice COATS delivered the Opinion of the Court.

Reyes sought review of the court of appeals' judgment in People v. Reyes, 179 P.3d 170 (Colo.App.2007), which affirmed his convictions on numerous criminal charges arising from a home invasion. Before trial, the district court denied his motions to dismiss for various violations of the anti-shuttling provision of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers. The court of appeals upheld that ruling, finding that Reyes effectively waived the protections of the anti-shuttling provision by either requesting or acquiescing in transfers between state and federal custody during numerous and lengthy continuances, moved for by him.

By asking that he be returned to federal custody before final disposition of the charges against him, Reyes both waived the protections of the anti-shuttling statute at that time and was barred from asserting any earlier unobjected-to violations. The judgment of the court of appeals is therefore affirmed.

I.

For his part in a 1999 home invasion in Arapahoe County, the defendant, Efrain Torres Reyes, was convicted of first degree kidnapping, sexual assault, second degree kidnapping, sexual assault on a child, first degree burglary, aggravated robbery, second degree sexual assault on a child, felony menacing, and third degree assault, for which he was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison, plus forty-eight years. Reyes and his accomplice were apparently looking for a large amount of money they believed to be located on the premises. Evidence indicated that the occupants of the home were beaten and terrorized, and their ten-year-old daughter was raped and sodomized by Reyes.

Reyes was arrested in 2000 in New Mexico on a federal firearms charge, for which he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to a term of forty-eight months at the federal penitentiary in Florence. In April 2001, an arrest warrant was issued in Arapahoe County, and a detainer was lodged against him by this state. During the course of the state proceedings, Reyes was produced by writ in the Arapahoe County District Court for various hearings, after a number of which he was returned to federal custody in Florence.

At his first appearance in state court in August 2002, Reyes, who was assisted by the state public defender, requested that the matter be reset to give him an opportunity to contact a private attorney who had represented him in the past. The district court reset the advisement for September 27, 2002, and with the prosecution's assurance in open court that it would "try to get the defendant back at that time," Reyes was returned to federal custody. When Reyes was brought back to Arapahoe County on September 27, he told the court that he had been unable to contact the New Mexico attorney he had in mind.

At that time, Reyes expressly requested, in open court, that he be returned to federal custody in Florence again because he would be permitted there, unlike the Arapahoe County jail, to make the long distance telephone calls necessary to arrange for private counsel. After an exchange in which Reyes was quite insistent that he be returned to federal custody, the court denied his demand but assured him that it would try to get the New Mexico attorney to contact Reyes in the Arapahoe County jail and would direct the sheriff to accept and transfer to Reyes any calls from that attorney. Four days later, with attempts at contacting Reyes's desired attorney still unsuccessful, he again demanded in open court to be returned to federal custody. His demands were once more rejected by the district court, with express directions to the sheriff to accommodate Reyes's efforts to contact both the New Mexico attorney and a local attorney.

At a hearing on October 3, 2002, the state public defender, who was again assisting Reyes, represented that the court's directions had not been followed by the sheriff and that Reyes was asking that he be granted additional time and a transfer back to the federal penitentiary. At that point, the court granted the request to send Reyes back to Florence, and it set the matter for hearing on October 25. When Reyes returned to Arapahoe County for the October 25 hearing, still without counsel, the court finally required that his eligibility for public defender representation be evaluated, and it ordered that he not be returned to Florence for one week, during which time the district attorney agreed to contact the New Mexico attorney.

The following week, Reyes appeared before the court, again with the public defender. After receiving assessments from the district attorney and public defender concerning the likelihood that the New Mexico attorney would ever be retained, the court appointed the public defender and set the matter for preliminary hearing. To accommodate the public defender's schedule, the defense waived its right to a preliminary hearing within thirty days, and the hearing was set for January 22, 2003. At the time of his appointment and again several days later, the public defender asserted generally that the defendant was invoking all his rights, revoking any waivers, and demanding access to all physical evidence.

Later in November, Reyes was again returned to Florence; and on December 6, 2002, the local private counsel entered an appearance in place of the public defender and immediately moved to continue the preliminary hearing again. Reyes was brought back to Arapahoe County for a two-day preliminary hearing in February 2003, after which he was returned to federal custody. Reyes was again brought to Arapahoe County on May 9, 2003, to confer with counsel and be arraigned, after which he was again returned to Florence.

On June 30, 2003, Reyes filed a motion to dismiss for violation of the notification requirement of Article III of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers¹, but failed to assert any violation of the anti-shuttling provision.² In August, when Reyes was brought back to Arapahoe County for hearings on his motions, and argument on his IAD motion was delayed, the district court (acting through a different judge), on its own initiative, ordered that Reyes remain in state custody to avoid a possible anti-shuttling violation. One month later, when the court actually heard his Article III claim, Reyes's counsel for the first time informed the court that he intended to raise an anti-shuttling challenge, based on previous transfers between Arapahoe County and Florence. The court then ordered that Reyes be held in Arapahoe County until the motions hearing recommenced on October 8, 2003.

On October 8, Reyes's counsel filed his first anti-shuttling motion and again waived speedy trial in conjunction with a request to continue the October 20 trial date. The district court ultimately denied the defense motion to dismiss, and Reyes requested a further delay to petition for intervention by this court. His petition was eventually denied, but during the delay occasioned by it, he was once again transferred back to federal custody in Florence, resulting in a second motion to dismiss for violation of the anti-shuttling provision. Although the district court acknowledged that this final transfer violated its express order, it again denied dismissal as a remedy.

On direct appeal of his convictions, Reyes assigned error to the denial of both motions to dismiss for anti-shuttling violations. The court of appeals rejected these challenges, finding that he had waived the statute's anti-shuttling protections by requesting numerous continuances, during which he either expressly requested or acquiesced in his return to the federal penitentiary in Florence. Reyes then petitioned for further review in this court, by writ of certiorari.

II.

The Interstate Agreement on Detainers is a compact, entered into by the federal government and the vast majority of states, including Colorado. See § 24-60-501, C.R.S. (2007). The Agreement creates uniform procedures for lodging and executing detainers on prisoners in other states to ensure that they will be held until they can be tried on outstanding charges. Alabama v. Bozeman, 533 U.S. 146, 148, 121 S.Ct. 2079, 150 L.Ed.2d 188 (2001). Article III of the Agreement gives a prisoner against whom a detainer has been lodged the right to request a final disposition of the relevant charges; and Article IV gives the jurisdiction in which charges remain untried the right to have the prisoner made available for trial. Id. at 149-50, 121 S.Ct. 2079. Once invoked, each article provides a specific, but different, time frame within which trial must be had.

For various policy reasons (which remain to some extent unclear, see id. at 156, 121 S.Ct. 2079), each article also contains what has come to be known as an "anti-shuttling provision," prohibiting the return of a prisoner to the sending state before completion of the trial for which he was initially transferred. In particular, Article IV(e) specifies:

If trial is not had on any indictment, information, or complaint contemplated hereby prior to the prisoner's being returned to the original place of imprisonment pursuant to article V(e) hereof, such indictment, information, or complaint shall not be of any further force or effect, and the court shall enter an order dismissing the same with prejudice.

§ 24-60-501, art. IV(e), C.R.S. (2007). While the Supreme Court has interpreted this language to mandate dismissal upon premature return, regardless of the brevity of the return or harmlessness of the error, it has also expressly noted that a...