State v. Daniels

• Decision Date: 23 May 1991
• Docket Number: No. 90-488,90-488
• Citation: 811 P.2d 1286,248 Mont. 343
• Parties: STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Nicholas Lee DANIELS, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Montana Supreme Court

Page 1286

811 P.2d 1286

248 Mont. 343

STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Nicholas Lee DANIELS, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 90-488.

Supreme Court of Montana.

Submitted on Briefs March 28, 1991.

Decided May 23, 1991.

J.B. Wheatcroft, Miles City, for defendant and appellant.

Marc Racicot, Atty. Gen., Joseph E. Thaggard, Asst., Helena, John Forsythe, County Atty., Forsyth, for plaintiff and respondent.

HARRISON, Justice.

Nicholas Lee Daniels appeals from a conviction of burglary after a jury trial in the District Court of the Sixteenth Judicial District, in and for the County of Rosebud, State of Montana. We affirm.

Two issues are presented on appeal:

1. Whether the defendant and appellant was denied his right to a speedy trial.

2. Whether the District Court erred in admitting certain evidence of other crimes.

At about 12:30 a.m. on the morning of June 18, 1989, Jerry's Big Sky Service, a service station located in Forsyth, Montana, was burglarized. Items taken from the service station included cash, candy, sunglasses, a car battery, and cigarettes. During the same night, a pickup truck was stolen from the nearby residence of one Gerald Schaefer.

On June 19, 1989, appellant, then seventeen years old, and his brother, Charles then sixteen, were apprehended in Hutchinson, Minnesota with the Schaefer pickup. The two had escaped from the Pine Hills School for Boys in Miles City, Montana, two days earlier. Items identified as those taken in the Forsyth, Montana, burglary were found in the truck.

The County Attorney of Rosebud County filed a petition in Youth Court on June 27, 1989, charging the appellant with the theft of Schaefer's truck and the burglary of Jerry's Big Sky Service. On July 26, 1989, the State moved the Youth Court for leave to transfer the burglary charge to District Court. While the appellant resisted the transfer of the burglary charge to the District Court, he failed to file his proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law with respect to that transfer hearing until August 30, 1989. The District Court, on September 20, 1989, granted the State's motion to transfer the burglary charge from Youth Court to the District Court and filed findings of fact, conclusions of law and an order accomplishing this transfer.

The procedural history which then transpired was as follows:

October 12, 1989: The appellant was arraigned in district court.

October 20, 1989: The appellant gave notice of his intent to rely on mental disease or defect as a defense to the charged crime.

October 23, 1989: The court held the required omnibus hearing and set the trial for December 13, 1989.

October 27, 1989: The State gave the appellant the first Just notice of its intent to introduce evidence of other crimes.

November 2, 1989: The appellant moved the court to order a mental examination of him.

November 17, 1989: The State moved to consolidate the appellant's trial with the trial of his brother Charles, a motion the court granted.

November 20, 1989: The court set the consolidated trial for January 23, 1990.

November 30, 1989: The court ordered a mental examination of the appellant.

January 6, 1990: The appellant wrote a letter to Charles Daniels which suggested that the defense attorney had a conflict of interest in representing both brothers in a consolidated trial. The State intercepted the letter and informed the court and the defense attorney that a potential conflict of interest existed.

January 16, 1990: The court held a hearing on the potential conflict of interest and noted that the impending trial date would likely be continued.

January 19, 1990: The court appointed separate counsel for Charles Daniels.

February 5, 1990: The court set the trial date for March 6, 1990.

February 20, 1990: Charles Daniels' new attorney moved to sever his trial from that of the appellant.

March 2, 1990: The State moved to continue the trial date because of the unavailability of a witness. The court continued the trial until March 27, 1990.

March 22, 1990: Five days before the trial date, the appellant filed a motion to dismiss the instant case for lack of speedy trial.

March 23, 1990: The court continued the trial date in order to provide the State with an opportunity to respond to the appellant's motion to dismiss.

March 30, 1990: The appellant was released from jail on bail.

April 26, 1990: The court denied the appellant's motion to dismiss.

May 11, 1990: The State filed a second Just notice of its intention to introduce at trial evidence of other crimes, including the theft of Schaefer's pickup truck.

May 15, 1990: Trial commenced in the instant case.

Prior to trial, counsel for the appellant filed a motion in limine to prevent the State from admitting evidence of the appellant's record as a juvenile, including his theft of the pickup truck on the night the burglary occurred. This motion was denied with respect to the theft of the pickup truck, which the court perceived as part of the res gestae of the burglary. At trial, three witnesses called by the State offered evidence and testified concerning possible participation by the appellant in other crimes. Gerald Schaefer testified that his truck had a value in excess of $300. Rosebud County Sheriff's Deputy Charles Skillen corroborated Mr. Schaefer's testimony that someone had stolen Schaefer's truck at approximately the same time as the burglary at Jerry's Big Sky Service. Deputy Skillen further testified that the authorities found the pickup truck in Hutchinson, Minnesota. However, the court did not allow Skillen to testify specifically that the appellant and his brother Charles were in possession of the vehicle at the time the police recovered it in Minnesota. All of this testimony went to the chain of custody of the evidence taken from the stolen pickup truck.

In addition to the above testimony, appellant's brother, Charles, testified for the State and offered testimony regarding the theft of the pickup truck and other crimes committed by the appellant. Charles claimed that the appellant did not enter Jerry's Big Sky Service, but acted as a lookout during the burglary. Charles' testimony also revealed that he and the appellant had escaped from Pine Hills School for Boys. However, this testimony was stricken and the jury was directed to disregard the reference to the Pine Hills School for Boys.

Upon completion of the State's case-in-chief the appellant moved for a mistrial because of the testimony of Deputy Skillen and Charles Daniels about possible other crimes committed by the appellant. This motion was denied. The court ruled that the theft of the truck constituted the same transaction as the burglary and that the references to Pine Hills and other burglaries were inadvertent on the part of the witnesses. The jury found the appellant guilty of the offense charged. He now appeals.

Issue one, the speedy trial issue, is complicated principally because there was a transfer from a juvenile to an adult court. The District Court properly applied the law in determining whether the appellant was denied a speedy trial, relying on this Court's opinion in State v. Palmer (1986), 223 Mont. 25, 27, 723 P.2d 956, 958. In Palmer we noted:

Palmer first contends that he was denied his right to a speedy trial. Any person accused of a crime is guaranteed the right to a speedy trial pursuant to the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Klopfer v. North Carolina- 1967), 386 U.S. 213, 87 S.Ct. 988, 18 L.Ed.2d 1. The right to a speedy trial is also guaranteed by Article II, § 24 of the 1972 Montana Constitution. The test to be applied to determine whether an accused's right to a speedy trial has been violated was first set forth in Barker v. Wingo (1972), 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101. This Court applied and stated the Barker test in State ex rel. Briceno v. District Court (1977), 173 Mont. 516, 518, 568 P.2d 162, 163-64 as follows:

These cases involve a sensitive balancing of four factors, in which the conduct of the prosecution and the defendant are weighed in determining whether there has been a denial of the right to a speedy trial. The four factors to be evaluated and balanced are:

(1) Length of delay;

(2) Reason for delay;

(3) Assertion of the right by defendant; and

(4) Prejudice to the defendant.

This Court has stated that the first of the Barker factors, the length of delay, is the trigger to a speedy trial inquiry. There is no need to examine the latter three factors unless some delay deemed presumptively prejudicial has occurred. State v. Harvey (1979), 184 Mont. 423, 603 P.2d 661.

The United States Supreme Court has determined that the speedy trial clock does not start running until the defendant becomes an "accused" in a criminal proceeding. United States v. Marion (1971), 404 U.S. 307, 313, 92 S.Ct. 455, 459, 30 L.Ed.2d 468, 474.

The appellant claims that the time used to figure the length of the delay begins to run on the date he was initially arrested and brought back to Montana from Minnesota, June 19, 1989, or at least from the date the original petition for a hearing was filed in the Youth Court, June 27, 1989. Relying on Marion, the State claims that the appellant only became an "accused" for purposes of the criminal speedy trial computation when the information was filed in District Court.

We note here that while the State alleged that the appellant did not become a "criminal defendant" subject to the jurisdiction of the District Court until September 26, 1989, he went through the civil Youth Court proceedings for a period of time previous to that date. The trial court started the clock when the appellant became an "accused" in the civil Youth Court proceeding on June 27, 1989. The court noted, however, that if the youth resists the motion to transfer to the adult court, that resistance ought to be considered when...