State v. Mosby

• Decision Date: 11 January 2022
• Docket Number: DA 19-0378
• Citation: 2022 MT 5
• Court: Montana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE OF MONTANA, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. JOHN THURLOW MOSBY, Defendant and Appellant.

2022 MT 5

STATE OF MONTANA, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. JOHN THURLOW MOSBY, Defendant and Appellant.

No. DA 19-0378

Supreme Court of Montana

January 11, 2022

Argued and Submitted: October 13, 2021

APPEAL FROM: District Court of the Fourth Judicial District, In and For the County of Missoula, Cause No. DC-05-403 Honorable Robert L. Deschamps, III, Presiding Judge

For Appellant: Chad Wright (argued), Appellate Defender, Helena Montana

For Appellee: Austin Knudsen, Montana Attorney General, C. Mark Fowler (argued), Assistant Attorney General, Helena, Montana

Kirsten Pabst, Missoula County Attorney, Jordan Kilby, Deputy County Attorney, Missoula, Montana

OPINION

MIKE MCGRATH, CHIEF JUSTICE

¶1 John Thurlow Mosby appeals two decisions by the Fourth Judicial District Court in Missoula County. The first occurred on February 15, 2018, when the District Court reinstated dismissed criminal charges against Mosby over his counsel's objection. The second was an opinion and order issued December 28, 2018, addressing constitutional arguments Mosby made that continuing the proceeding violated his speedy trial rights.

¶2 We restate the issues on appeal as follows:

Issue One: Did the District Court abuse its discretion when it resumed Mosby's dismissed criminal case after Mosby spent years in civil commitment following an earlier finding of his lack of fitness to proceed?

Issue Two: Was the District Court's resumption of Mosby's criminal case a violation of his constitutional right to a speedy trial?

Issue Three: Should Mosby's time in civil commitment count as credit toward his criminal sentence of incarceration?

¶3 We reverse on Issue One, and therefore it is unnecessary to address Issues Two and Three.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

¶4 In 2005, the Missoula County Attorney's Office charged Mosby with felony sexual assault and misdemeanor indecent exposure for an incident in the showers at a gym. Mosby had spent his life in and out of foster care and group home settings, and he had long displayed mental and behavioral issues. At the time of the incident, Mosby was 24 years old. He had been in civil commitment at the Montana Developmental Center (MDC) until September 2001, and in 2005, he was under court-ordered 24-hour supervision. He resided in a group home in Missoula which had taken residents on an outing to the gym.

¶5 Mosby's attorneys arranged for an expert to psychologically evaluate him, and they presented the District Court with the expert's findings of Mosby's developmental disability, impaired intellectual functioning, and inability to comprehend the proceedings against him. The expert also believed that Mosby's condition was unlikely to ever significantly improve. Based on the expert's findings, the District Court found Mosby unfit to proceed and suspended the criminal process while another, independent expert evaluated Mosby's fitness and whether he could gain competency to stand trial.

¶6 The second expert also found Mosby's ability to participate in his legal defense compromised. Thus, the District Court dismissed his criminal case, and the State opened a civil case with a petition for emergency commitment. The District Court found that Mosby met the requirements for civil commitment, and in May 2006, Mosby was sent to MDC again.

¶7 Each spring for years thereafter, the State filed petitions for recommitment in Mosby's civil case, typically over no objection from Mosby. In 2013, Mosby began to request hearings regarding his recommitment. That year and in 2014, the District Court found he still met the requirements for civil commitment. In 2015, Mosby requested a hearing but later withdrew and stated he did not object to extending the commitment. In 2016, the District Court held a hearing and again renewed Mosby's commitment. Then, in 2017, Mosby requested a hearing and time to complete another psychological evaluation.

¶8 By that time, the Montana Legislature had restructured the state's civil commitment laws to express its intent "to provide services to individuals with developmental disabilities in the community . . . and to close the Montana developmental center." 2015 Mont. Laws Ch. 444, § 1. The new laws also changed the maximum period of a civil commitment order from one year to 90 days. 2015 Mont. Laws ch. 373, § 1. Thus, the acts of Mosby and the State leading to this appeal reflect differing ideas about how to navigate the new landscape that disfavors routine commitment to MDC year after year.

¶9 Mosby's approach was to pursue community-based treatment rather than another 90-day commitment period.^[1] For his recommitment hearing scheduled in August 2017, Mosby procured an additional psychological report. The evaluation included notes on Mosby's IQ tests, which ranged from 67 in 2010 to a recent score of 84, and questioned whether his developmental disability label was "bona fide." This opinion was Mosby's evidence to counter the findings submitted by the MDC screening team, which claimed that Mosby's severe developmental disability still warranted his commitment.

¶10 The State took a different approach. Before the District Court's hearing or decision on another commitment period in the civil case, the State entered a new motion in its dismissed criminal case from 2005, the first action in that case in over 11 years. The State pointed to the evaluation Mosby had submitted for the 2017 civil hearing and argued that the court should reassess his fitness to proceed to criminal trial.

¶11 In hearings in 2018, the District Court reinstated Mosby's criminal case and continued the civil case so that he could remain at MDC while the criminal case moved forward. The District Court did this over Mosby's objection that the District Court did not have the statutory authority to revive his dismissed criminal charges from 2005. The case proceeded toward trial upon a later showing he was now fit to face criminal charges. Mosby filed a motion to dismiss the case as a violation of his speedy trial rights, but the District Court denied this motion as well. In an agreement with the State, Mosby pleaded guilty to the sexual assault charge while reserving these issues for appeal. The District Court sentenced him to 100 years of incarceration with 50 suspended.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶12 We review questions of law and statutory interpretation for correctness. State v. Tison, 2003 MT 342, ¶5, 318 Mont. 465, 81 P.3d 471. We review a district court's discretionary rulings for abuse of discretion, considering whether the district court's decision is arbitrary and without conscientious judgment or if it "so exceed the bounds of reason as to work a substantial injustice." State v. Giddings, 2009 MT 61, ¶ 42, 349 Mont. 347, 208 P.3d 363.

DISCUSSION

¶13 Issue One: Did the District Court abuse its discretion when it resumed Mosby's dismissed criminal case after Mosby spent years in civil commitment following an earlier finding of his lack of fitness to proceed?

¶14 Two key issues arise from the way the District Court handled Mosby's case here. The first concerns whether Montana's statutes on fitness to stand trial permit a district court to resume a criminal case that it earlier dismissed due to the defendant's mental unfitness to face trial. We hold that read together, the applicable statutes do permit such action when a once-unfit defendant regains the requisite competence. However, the second issue concerns when and how to appropriately exercise renewed criminal jurisdiction. Here, we find that two significant flaws in the District Court's approach demonstrate why it was an abuse of discretion to renew Mosby's criminal case. The District Court invalidly "revived" charges dismissed over a decade earlier without the issuance of new charging documents as due process requires. And the District Court failed to consider, as the law intends, the justness of proceeding to criminal trial after so much time under Mosby's circumstances.

1. Section 46-14-222, MCA, provides district courts the discretionary authority to resume a criminal case.

¶15 The initial question Mosby raises is whether a dismissal due to mental unfitness always precludes a case from being resumed if the defendant appears to regain fitness. Two of Montana's criminal procedure statutes address such circumstances, and the State and Mosby disagree about how they operate together. The two provisions are §§ 46-14-221 ("Section 221") and -222 ("Section 222"), MCA.

¶16 To understand the effect of these provisions, it helps to review their history. What Section 221 and Section 222 do today was once accomplished in a single statutory paragraph. The law was enacted in 1967 and worked as follows: upon a finding of a defendant's unfitness to proceed in a criminal trial, the district court had to suspend the case and commit the defendant "for so long as such unfitness shall endure." 1967 Mont. Laws ch. 196, § 1. Then, if the defendant regained fitness, the proceeding had to be resumed. The language about resumption in 1967 was nearly identical to that in effect in Section 222 today. This clause includes the caveat that after a defendant regains fitness, a judge may decide to dismiss the case or commence civil commitment proceedings if so much time has passed by that point that it would be unjust to still proceed with criminal charges. See § 46-14-222, MCA; 1967 Mont. Laws ch. 196, § 1.

¶17 What might have happened to Mosby under the original law is that his unfitness to proceed would result in the indefinite suspension of the case. He would be held in a state mental health facility as long as he remained unfit, and the case would resume if his status improved-unless, that is, the judge decided it would be unfair to try him at that point. A judge who...