State v. Allen

• Decision Date: 23 April 2004
• Docket Number: No. 2003-KK-2815.,2003-KK-2815.
• Citation: 871 So.2d 1097
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Ardis ALLEN.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

871 So.2d 1097

STATE of Louisiana v. Ardis ALLEN.

No. 2003-KK-2815.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

April 23, 2004.

Charles C. Fonti, Jr., Attorney General, John Marvin, District Attorney, Jeffrey S. Cox, Patrick R. Jackson, for applicant.

Darren C. Giles, for respondent.

CALOGERO, Chief Justice.¹

We granted this writ application filed by the State of Louisiana to determine whether the two-year time limit for commencing trial in non-capital felony cases set by La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 578² is interrupted pursuant to La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 579,³ suspended pursuant to La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 580,⁴ or neither interrupted nor suspended, when the defendant pleads guilty in accord with a plea agreement negotiated with the State and that guilty plea is later set aside.

For the reasons set forth below, we conclude that the guilty plea under the circumstances of this case suspended the running of the time period for commencing trial. Therefore, under Article 580, the State had the remainder of the two-year time limit set forth in Article 578, but no less than one year, from the date this court's judgment vacating the guilty plea became final, in which to commence trial.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The charges against the defendant arose out of an incident in September of 1996 at a small grocery store in Haughton, Louisiana. The defendant and his stepbrother, Russell Jason Allen, arrived at the store in Russell's truck. Russell remained in the truck while the defendant entered the store armed with a gun. When the defendant demanded money and threatened to kill the two store employees, one of them pulled her gun and shot the defendant in the upper torso. The defendant shot his gun several times, striking that employee in the arm and causing a flesh wound. The defendant was rendered a paraplegic by his injury.

The defendant and his stepbrother were charged together in two bills of information with two counts of attempted armed robbery and two counts of attempted first degree murder. Both bills of information were filed on December 13, 1996. The defendant's stepbrother had previously been charged in a third bill of information with being an accessory after the fact to armed robbery. This charge was made on the basis that Russell had allegedly dragged the injured defendant from the scene, transported him back to their hometown of Benton, cleaned blood from his truck, put blood in the defendant's car, hid the gun, and initially lied to police about the incident when they arrived at the family's mobile home. Russell, when confronted with facts that did not correspond with his story, confessed his and the defendant's involvement in the armed robbery and shooting at the store. The defendant later confessed at the hospital to his involvement in the crime.

On April 8, 1997, less than four months after he was charged, the defendant entered a plea of guilty to one count of attempted first degree murder. Pursuant to the plea agreement negotiated between the defendant's counsel and the prosecution, the State dismissed the two attempted armed robbery counts and the remaining attempted first degree murder count in exchange for the defendant's guilty plea, a "straight" sentence of thirty years at hard labor, and the defendant's promise to testify against his stepbrother on behalf of the State.

In June of 1997, the defendant obtained a copy of the transcript of his guilty plea colloquy. On February 24, 1998, he filed an application for post-conviction relief challenging the validity of his guilty plea. After years of litigation, the defendant obtained relief on May 11, 2001, when this court granted his writ application and vacated the guilty plea on the basis that the defendant had entered his plea of guilty in reliance upon the district court's promise to impose a sentence rendered illegally lenient by design because it omitted any restriction on the availability of parole, a sentence relator could not by law serve as imposed. State ex rel. Allen v. State, 00-0220 (La.5/11/01), 792 So.2d 1. This court remanded the matter to the district court "to give relator the opportunity to plead anew and proceed to trial if he chooses not to plead guilty." Id.

The court's order vacating the guilty plea became final on May 25, 2001, when the State did not seek a rehearing within the time period set forth in La. Sup.Ct. Rule IX, § 1. Approximately thirteen months later on June 27, 2002, the defendant pro se filed a motion to quash the bill of information and to be released from custody, asserting the State had failed to commence trial against him within one year of the finality of this court's decision as required by La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 582.⁵ The district court on August 26, 2002, denied the motion to quash, concluding the State has two years from May 25, 2002, in which to proceed.

The court of appeal, after several refusals to entertain the defendant's writ application, eventually granted the writ and made it peremptory. The court of appeal, in an unpublished order, found the district court had erred in denying the motion to quash, and reversed. 38,081 (La.App. 2 Cir. 9/18/03). This court granted the State's writ application to review that decision. State v. Allen, 03-2815 (La.11/7/03), 857 So.2d 507.

DISCUSSION

Chapter 2 of Title XVII of the Code of Criminal Procedure governs the time limitations upon trial of the accused. For the non-capital felonies with which the defendant has been charged in the instant case, the State had two years from the institution of prosecution to commence trial. La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 578(2). As set forth in Note 1, the Code of Criminal Procedure identifies the specific circumstances when this time limitation may be interrupted, La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 579, or suspended, La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 580. Article 582 of the Code of Criminal Procedure governs the time limitation for commencing a new trial when the defendant "obtains a new trial or there is a mistrial...." La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 582. In those circumstances, "the state must commence the second trial within one year from the date the new trial is granted, or the mistrial is granted, or within the period established by Article 578, whichever is greater."

The question before the court is: what effect did the defendant's guilty plea have upon the running of the time limitation set forth in Article 578? The defendant is seeking to have the charges against him quashed because, he asserts, the State failed to commence trial within one year as required by Article 582 after his guilty plea was set aside by this court. Implicit in the defendant's argument is the assumption that the guilty plea is equivalent to a trial and thus does not interrupt or suspend the running of the time limitation of Article 578 for commencing trial, such that the two-year time period had expired and the State had only one year from the date of the finality of this court's judgment in which to commence trial. The State asserted in the district court that Article 582, which applies to a new trial after a defendant has been tried and the conviction has been reversed on appeal, or a mistrial has been declared, is not applicable in this case, because the defendant was not tried; he pleaded guilty.

Turning first to whether Article 582 applies to the facts of this case, we conclude that Article 582 does not so apply. By its own language, Article 582 presumes either that the defendant has been tried and a new trial has been granted (whether by an appellate court or the district court), or that the trial against the defendant was commenced and a mistrial was declared. In either case, "the second trial" must commence within one year from the date the new trial is granted or the mistrial ordered, or within the time period set forth in Article 578, whichever is greater. La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 582. Article 582, therefore, applies only when a trial has commenced and either it was completed or a mistrial ended it prematurely. A guilty plea, while it results in a conviction, is not a trial, such that the defendant does not obtain a "new" trial if the guilty plea is vacated. Instead, the defendant is merely allowed to plead anew and the State may then proceed to trial if the defendant pleads not guilty, as we acknowledged he might in our order vacating the defendant's guilty plea.

We agree with the reasoning of the Louisiana Fourth Circuit in State v. Barksdale, 459 So.2d 554, 555 (La.App. 4th Cir.1984), a case directly on point that held Article 582 does not apply when the defendant pleads guilty and is later granted permission to withdraw his guilty plea. In Barksdale, the defendant pleaded guilty barely one month after the bill of information was filed, but some nine years later he was allowed to withdraw that plea. Over one year after that order, the defendant filed a motion to quash asserting the State had failed to commence trial within one year. The court of appeal declined to apply Article 582, reasoning that the situation did not involve a new trial or mistrial; instead, the defendant's case had been closed by the State shortly after prosecution was instituted, and was revived nearly nine years later. In the instant case, too, there is no new or mistrial situation; thus, Article 582 governing the effect of the ordering of a new trial on the time limitation for commencing a second trial does not apply.

Because we decline to equate a guilty plea with a trial for purposes of the speedy trial statutes, the issue remains whether the guilty plea serves either to interrupt or to suspend the running of the time limitation set forth in Article 578 for commencing trial. Though the State in its argument to the district court used the word "interrupts," it actually asserted that the running of the twenty-four-month time period in Article 578 was effectively suspended when the defendant entered his plea of guilty four months after the bill of information was filed. The...