State v. Beaudion
| Decision Date | 02 July 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 65429.,65429. |
| Citation | 352 P.3d 39,131 Nev. Adv. Op. 48 |
| Parties | The STATE of Nevada, Appellant, v. Earl Wayne BEAUDION, Respondent. |
| Court | Nevada Supreme Court |
Adam Paul Laxalt, Attorney General, Carson City; Steven B. Wolfson, District Attorney, Steven S. Owens and Jonathan VanBoskerck, Chief Deputy District Attorneys, and Jeffrey S. Rogan, Deputy District Attorney, Clark County, for Appellant.
Philip Kohn, Public Defender, and Jeffrey M. Banks and Howard Brooks, Deputy Public Defenders, Clark County, for Respondent.
Before SAITTA, GIBBONS and PICKERING, JJ.
NRS 172.241 affords the target of a grand jury investigation the opportunity to testify before them unless, after holding “a closed hearing on the matter,” the district court determines that adequate cause exists to withhold target notice. In this case, the district judge supervising the grand jury entered an order authorizing the State to withhold target notice based on the district attorney's written request and supporting affidavit, without conducting a face-to-face oral hearing. We must decide whether this procedure satisfies NRS 172.241's “closed hearing” requirement. We hold that it does and therefore reverse the order dismissing the indictment that was entered by the district judge to whom the criminal case was assigned after the indictment was returned.
The State alleges that respondent Earl Wayne Beaudion committed battery causing substantial bodily harm constituting domestic violence against his then-girlfriend when he tied her to their bed and poured boiling water over her exposed torso, burning her so severely that she required skin grafts. The State further alleges that Beaudion intimidated or threatened the victim with additional harm if she cooperated in his prosecution.
Initially, the State attempted to proceed against Beaudion by information, rather than indictment. Each time the date scheduled for the preliminary hearing arrived, the victim failed to appear and, eventually, she vanished. After three failed attempts at conducting the preliminary hearing, the State dismissed its criminal complaint against Beaudion without prejudice.
Several years later, detectives located the victim. The district attorney's office renewed its efforts to charge Beaudion, this time utilizing the grand jury, which conducts its proceedings largely in secret. See NRS 172.245. Before presenting its case against Beaudion to the grand jury, the district attorney's office submitted a written application to the court supervising the grand jury for permission to withhold target notice from Beaudion. As grounds for withholding target notice, the application asserted that Beaudion would threaten or harm the victim and/or her family to prevent the victim from testifying if Beaudion knew the grand jury was considering his indictment. The ex parte application was supported by an affidavit from the prosecutor relating that “previously the Defendant intimidated the Victim to the point where she would not appear for court”; that, when the victim had to be hospitalized for her burns, Beaudion had driven her from Nevada to California “to avoid being caught for committing the crimes in this case”; and that “[t]here is a good faith basis to believe that if the Defendant learns of the State's intentions of indicting him ... he will again intimidate or harm the Victim ... to prevent her from testifying.” After considering the written application and supporting affidavit, but without holding an oral hearing, the court entered a written order finding cause for and authorizing the State to proceed without notice to Beaudion.
The victim testified before the grand jury, which returned a true bill, and the State filed an indictment against Beaudion in district court. Under local court rules, see EDCR 1.31, the case was administratively assigned to a different department of the district court than had impaneled the grand jury and so had issued the order dispensing with target notice. Beaudion filed a motion to dismiss in the department of the district court to which his criminal case was assigned. He argued that the order authorizing the district attorney's office to withhold Marcum notice was deficient because it had not been preceded by the “closed hearing” required by NRS 172.241(4) and that this deficiency invalidated the indictment.
The district court granted Beaudion's motion to dismiss. It accepted that, on the merits, the application and supporting affidavit established more than adequate cause to withhold Marcum notice from Beaudion under NRS 172.241(3)(b) (). And, it rejected Beaudion's argument that the “closed hearing” needed to include him and his lawyer as participants. Nonetheless, the district court deemed it a violation of NRS 172.241(4)'s “closed hearing” requirement for the court to have dispensed with target notice based on the prosecutor's written submissions, without conducting an oral, face-to-face hearing. In the district court's view, the failure to hold the hearing required by NRS 172.241(4) invalidated the order authorizing the State to withhold target notice from Beaudion and rendered the indictment procedurally defective, requiring dismissal. The dismissal was effectively with prejudice since by then the statute of limitations had run. The State appeals, and we reverse.
The State makes a threshold argument that it did not make in the district court challenging the district court's jurisdiction over Beaudion's motion to dismiss. It contends that the district judge assigned to Beaudion's criminal case lacked authority to “overrule” the grand jury judge's decision to waive target notice, and that instead of asking the former to “overrule” the latter, Beaudion should have challenged the grand jury judge's decision by way of an extraordinary writ from this court. We disagree. NRS 174.105 allows a defendant to challenge procedural defects in the indictment by pretrial motion, and the State offers no authority that makes an original action in this court the exclusive means for a criminal defendant to contest compliance with NRS 172.241. Nor are we persuaded that the district judge assigned to Beaudion's criminal case improperly reexamined or second-guessed the grand jury judge's substantive determination that adequate cause existed to withhold target notice. On the contrary, the district judge examined the procedure followed, specifically, whether it deviated from NRS 172.241(4) in such a way as to require dismissal of the indictment—questions neither tendered to nor decided by the district judge charged with supervising the grand jury's preindictment activities. While one district judge may not directly overrule the decision of another district judge on the same matter in the same case, see State v. Babayan, 106 Nev. 155, 165, 787 P.2d 805, 812–13 (1990), this rule does not prohibit a second district judge who is assigned to a matter by operation of administrative court rules from deciding a matter related but not identical to another regularly assigned judge's earlier rulings. Rohlfing v. Second Judicial Dist. Court, 106 Nev. 902, 906–07, 803 P.2d 659, 662–63 (1990) (); see Major v. State, –––– Nev. ––––, ––––, 333 P.3d 235, 237–38 (2014).
Although we normally “review a district court's decision to grant or deny a motion to dismiss an indictment for abuse of discretion,” Hill v. State, 124 Nev. 546, 550, 188 P.3d 51, 54 (2008), this appeal concerns the proper interpretation of NRS 172.241(4), specifically, its “closed hearing” requirement. “Statutory [interpretation] involves a question of law, and this court reviews the statute under scrutiny de novo, without deference to the district court's conclusions.” Schuster v. Eighth Judicial Dist. Court, 123 Nev. 187, 190–91, 160 P.3d 873, 875 (2007) ( NRS 172.145(2) ).
The question we must decide is what NRS 172.241(4) means by its “closed hearing” requirement. The statute does not define the term “closed hearing.” Beaudion argued in the district court that the “closed hearing” excludes the public but includes the target— in other words, that before granting an application to withhold notice, the court must conduct an adversarial hearing, with the...
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