State v. McCoy
| Decision Date | 29 January 1980 |
| Docket Number | No. 12346,12346 |
| Citation | 100 Idaho 753,605 P.2d 517 |
| Parties | STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Eugene L. McCOY, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Idaho Supreme Court |
R. M. Whittier, Issac McDougall, of McDougall & Gardner, Pocatello, for defendant-appellant.
David H. Leroy, Atty. Gen., Lynn E. Thomas, P. Mark Thompson, Deputy Attys. Gen., Boise, for plaintiff-respondent.
A petition for rehearing filed by respondent State of Idaho was considered and denied. The previous opinion is withdrawn and the following opinion is substituted therefor.
The defendant-appellant, Eugene McCoy, was a Bingham County magistrate. He served in this position from 1971 to December 23, 1974. On December 23, 1974 a criminal complaint was filed against McCoy charging him with four counts of embezzlement pursuant to I.C. § 18-2402. 1 Each of the four counts in the complaint charged that McCoy had appropriated or secreted certain money from Bingham County. The case went to trial and on December 13, 1975, a jury found McCoy guilty of each of the four counts. On April 12, 1976 the district court sentenced McCoy to a term in the state penitentiary not to exceed seven years. McCoy appeals his conviction and sentence.
The following is an outline of the facts and circumstances that are pertinent in this appeal.
The Bingham County Sheriff's and County Clerk's Offices had an arrangement whereby the Sheriff's Office would collect bail bonds and traffic citation fines when the Clerk's Office was closed, i. e. after regular business hours and on weekends. When an individual would post a bond or pay a traffic citation at the Sheriff's Office, a receipt would be prepared in duplicate. The original receipt would be given to the individual posting the bond or the traffic citation fine. A copy of the original receipt would be retained in the Sheriff's Office along with the money received. The following weekday the money received by the Sheriff's Office would usually be collected by someone from the Clerk's Office. No single individual from the Clerk's Office was assigned this particular task; however, the defendant McCoy was often the person who would pick up the money. Before the money was collected by the Clerk's Office, carbon copy receipts would be compared with the money to be collected. The person collecting the money would then initial the receipt to acknowledge receiving the money if there were no discrepancies between the amount shown by the receipts and the money to be collected. The money was then to be taken and deposited in the Clerk's Office. When the Clerk's Office received the money posted for each of the bonds or citations, entries were to be made in the Clerk's records. The records would reflect, among other things, the name of the person posting the money in the Sheriff's Office and the amount received from the Sheriff's Office. The records would not, however, reflect who had delivered the money to the Clerk's Office. It may also be noted that there was no mechanism or procedure by which the person depositing the money in the Clerk's Office would be credited or given a receipt for turning the money over to the Clerk's Office.
Sometime in mid-December, 1974, an audit and investigation of this bond and traffic citation posting system was conducted by Bingham County. The audit and investigation disclosed that some of the money which had been posted with the Sheriff's Office had not reached the Clerk's Office.
On December 23, 1974, the embezzlement charges were filed against McCoy. In essence, McCoy was accused of taking money from the Sheriff's Office and subsequently failing to turn the money over to the Clerk's Office.
McCoy appeals, pointing out some nineteen errors which he alleges were committed. We will discuss only those which we find meritorious.
McCoy claims he was denied a fair and impartial trial because certain exculpatory material was not produced and certain exculpatory facts were not revealed by the prosecution and made available to him prior to trial. Thus McCoy asserts that the district court erred by not granting him a new trial because of the non-disclosure prior to trial of this exculpatory evidence.
On August 8, 1975, McCoy filed a Motion for Discovery and Inspection of Documents, which requested, among other things, that the prosecution set forth a "Schedule of Tangible Objects" (including documents material to the preparation of the defense or intended for use by the prosecution as evidence at trial), and a "Schedule of Evidence Favorable to the Defendant." McCoy contends that the prosecution's failure to turn over or set forth in the evidence schedule: (1) a certain audit document (which we will refer to as exhibit 45); (2) an inventory of what was taken from his desk and office during a search conducted on December 18, 1974; (3) the audit of the Bingham County Sheriff's Office; (4) the audits of any other Bingham County offices disclosing mishandling of funds; and (5) the facts of any other irregularities in the Bingham County Sheriff's Office concerning money transactions, culminated in a violation of his due process rights and prevented him from preparing and developing an adequate defense in violation of his right to a fair trial. The most important item not available to McCoy and which his counsel did not have the benefit of examining and investigating was the audit document (exhibit 45). The existence of this item became known to McCoy only at time of trial. The state responds to McCoy's argument by asserting that it fully complied with the requirements of I.C.R. 16 and that McCoy's constitutional rights were not violated by the non-disclosure of these items prior to trial. 2 The circumstances surrounding the late disclosure of exhibit 45 at trial are as follows: The state began its case in chief on the afternoon of December 4, 1975. The prosecution case continued through December 5, at which time the court recessed until December 9. It was during the state's case on the afternoon of December 9 that an attempt to introduce exhibit 45 was made by the state. Defendant objected to its introduction on the ground that it was not furnished to him pursuant to the pretrial discovery motions and orders. The objection was sustained and exhibit 45 was not introduced into evidence, but rather was used as a worksheet to refresh the memory of the witness then on the stand, Mrs. Christensen. It was at this time the defense was first furnished a copy of exhibit 45 for their use. The state finished its direct examination of Mrs. Christensen on the 9th and the following morning, December 10, the defense began cross-examination of Mrs. Christensen. The state rested its case in chief on December 10, 1975. The defense on December 10, 1975 moved for a mistrial including as one of the grounds the failure of the prosecution to furnish exhibit 45 prior to trial. The judge denied this motion and the defense began presentation of its case in chief on December 11, 1975. On December 12, the defense rested.
Exhibit 45 was a list of some 314 names of individuals who had posted money in the Sheriff's Office. Corresponding to each name on the list the document indicated, among other things, how much money had been posted by each of these individuals with the Sheriff's Office, the initials of the individual who collected the money for the Clerk's Office, and whether the Clerk's Office had a record of the bond or traffic citation and correspondingly a record of the money received. This audit document had been prepared during the course of the investigation and had been used by the Clerk's Office in determining what moneys were missing. The document disclosed that the Clerk's Office had no record of certain receipts and money which had been initialed and collected from the Sheriff's Office by McCoy. The document also disclosed that certain receipts and money which had Not been initialed and collected by McCoy were also missing from the Clerk's records. The complexity of exhibit 45 was such that some time was needed by McCoy to study it and thereby ascertain its significance.
Defendant's motion for discovery and inspection of documents read in part as follows:
All books, papers, documents . . . tangible objects . . . or copies or portions thereof which are in the possession, custody, or control of the Prosecuting Attorney and which are material to the preparation of the defense or intended for use by the Prosecutor as evidence at trial. . . .
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