State v. Snider, DA 16-0563
| Decision Date | 23 October 2018 |
| Docket Number | DA 16-0563 |
| Citation | 393 Mont. 166,2018 MT 258,429 P.3d 268 |
| Parties | STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Tyler Jack SNIDER, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | Montana Supreme Court |
For Appellant: Chad Wright, Appellate Defender, Deborah S. Smith, Assistant Appellate Defender, Helena, Montana
For Appellee: Timothy C. Fox, Montana Attorney General, Mardell Ployhar, Assistant Attorney General, Helena, Montana, Kevin R. Peterson, Musselshell County Attorney, Kent M. Sipe, former Musselshell County Attorney, Roundup, Montana
¶ 1 After losing his speedy trial motion, Tyler Jack Snider pleaded guilty to two counts of felony assault with a weapon in violation of § 45-5-213, MCA, in the Fourteenth Judicial District Court, Musselshell County. Snider received concurrent forty-year prison sentences. He raises three issues on appeal:
¶ 2 We affirm on issues one and two and remand to the District Court on issue three, with instructions to strike one of the information technology fees imposed in Snider’s sentence.
¶ 3 On February 15, 2015, Fallon McCleary was hanging out with Robert Lacroix and Cassandra Hafferman at Snider’s house before Snider returned home from work.1 McCleary was four months pregnant at the time with Snider’s child. As Hafferman was trying to leave, Snider drove up and blocked her vehicle in. He began yelling at McCleary and Lacroix and accused them of taking his things. Snider has admitted that he was high on methamphetamine at the time. Hafferman got out of her vehicle and asked Snider and Lacroix to move their vehicles so she could leave. As she was returning to her vehicle, she heard a gunshot. When she turned around, she saw Snider holding a handgun. Lacroix had his hands in the air. When Hafferman approached Snider, he pointed the gun at her, but lowered it to the ground when she put her hands up.
¶ 4 McCleary and Lacroix attempted to flee from Snider in Lacroix’s vehicle. Snider pursued them and began shooting at them. Law enforcement officers later found McCleary walking along U.S. Highway 87 with a gunshot wound
to her left ear. They learned that Lacroix also had suffered a gunshot wound to his arm. After obtaining a search warrant for Lacroix’s vehicle, officers found a hole in the base of the window with blood on the driver’s door armrest area. They also found a hole through the passenger headrest with blood on the seat at the base of the headrest. At the time of the shootings, Snider was serving a four-year suspended sentence for felony intimidation in DC 10-07 and was out of jail on bond in a proceeding to revoke that suspended sentence.
¶ 5 Snider was taken into custody on February 17, 2015, two days after the shooting. In his briefing before both this Court and the District Court, Snider states that he contacted law enforcement through his counsel on February 17 to inform them he wanted to turn himself in for the shootings and that the sheriff responded to Snider’s location and placed him under arrest as a suspect in the shooting. The record shows that on February 17, the State filed a petition to revoke against Snider in DC 10-07 and that the District Court issued an arrest warrant for violation of bail conditions in that case. This warrant was served on Snider the morning of February 18 at the Musselshell County Sheriff’s Office, where Snider was being held. On March 2, 2015, the court revoked Snider’s suspended sentence in DC 10-07 and imposed a four-year commitment to the Department of Corrections. He was sent to the Montana State Prison ("MSP") on a placement override that found Snider was not appropriate for placement at the Missoula Assessment & Sanction Center ("MASC"), and he remained incarcerated at MSP throughout the proceedings in this case.
¶ 6 The State moved for leave to file an information and filed a supporting affidavit on May 14, 2015, for the offenses in this case. The following week, the court issued an order granting the State leave to file, as well as an arrest warrant. The State filed its information against Snider on May 22, charging Snider with three counts of attempted deliberate homicide, one count of assault with a weapon, and one count of commission of an offense with a dangerous weapon, a sentence enhancement.
¶ 7 In September 2015, the court issued its scheduling order for the new charges, scheduling a four-day trial to start on February 9, 2016. More than two months later, Snider filed a motion to dismiss the charges because his right to a speedy trial had been violated. His motion did not have any attachments. The State attached to its response a single one-page form from March 2015, granting an override request to send Snider to MSP rather than MASC. At a hearing on the motion, neither party presented any testimony or additional evidence. The District Court denied the motion. It determined that the length of the delay between accusation and the scheduled trial was 263 days, counting from the date the State filed the information. This length of delay triggered the four-factor balancing test. After balancing the factors, the District Court determined that the State had not violated Snider’s right to a speedy trial.
¶ 8 The State and Snider entered a plea agreement in which Snider would plead guilty to two amended counts of assault with a weapon and the State would dismiss the remaining charges. Snider reserved his right to appeal the denial of his motion to dismiss. Following a sentencing hearing, the District Court sentenced Snider to two concurrent forty-year prison sentences, with a twenty-year parole restriction.
¶ 9 We review factual findings underlying a district court’s speedy trial ruling to determine whether those findings are clearly erroneous. State v. Ariegwe , 2007 MT 204, ¶ 119, 338 Mont. 442, 167 P.3d 815. Findings of fact are clearly erroneous if they are not supported by substantial credible evidence, if the court has misapprehended the effect of the evidence, or if a review of the record leaves this Court with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made. Ariegwe , ¶ 119. Whether a defendant has been denied a speedy trial is a question of constitutional law that we review de novo to determine whether the district court’s interpretation and application of the law are correct. Ariegwe , ¶ 119.
¶ 10 Whether a district court’s sentence violated a defendant’s constitutional rights is a question of law, which we review de novo. State v. Ferguson , 2005 MT 343, ¶ 99, 330 Mont. 103, 126 P.3d 463.
¶ 11 1. Was Snider entitled to dismissal of all charges for lack of a speedy trial?
¶ 12 Snider argues that the District Court should have dismissed this case for lack of a speedy trial. The State and Snider agree that the delay between accusation and trial was more than 200 days, triggering this Court’s established four-factor balancing test. Ariegwe , ¶ 41. The parties disagree, however, about the length of the delay. Snider insists that his right to a speedy trial attached on February 17, 2015, when he was arrested after the shooting. The State argues that the District Court correctly determined that Snider’s right to speedy trial did not attach until the State filed an information, charging him with the offenses, on May 22, 2015. Regardless, Snider maintains that the four factors in the balancing test favor him and weigh heavily against the State. He argues that all of the delay was attributable to the State as intentional or negligent delay and institutional delay. Further, he timely invoked his speedy trial right. Finally, he was prejudiced because he suffered oppressive pre-trial incarceration and undue anxiety and concern due to the delay, and the delay impaired his ability to present an effective defense.
¶ 13 The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article II, Section 24, of the Montana Constitution both guarantee a criminal defendant the right to a speedy trial. If the delay between accusation and trial exceeds 200 days, we examine alleged speedy trial violations under a four-factor test. Ariegwe , ¶ 41. We consider the length of the delay, the reasons for the delay, the defendant’s response to the delay, and the prejudice to the accused as a result of the delay. Ariegwe , ¶ 34. "No one factor is dispositive by itself; rather, the factors are related and must be considered together with such other circumstances as may be relevant." Ariegwe , ¶ 112.
¶ 14 We first consider the length of the delay. While both parties agree that the delay in this case was more than the threshold 200 days, we examine how far the delay surpassed that threshold, because the presumption of prejudice intensifies and the State’s burden to justify the delay increases as the delay grows longer. See Ariegwe , ¶ 62.
¶ 15 A defendant’s right to a speedy trial attaches on the date that the defendant becomes an "accused." Ariegwe , ¶ 42. A defendant becomes an accused "when a criminal prosecution has begun and extends to those persons who have been formally accused or charged in the course of that prosecution whether that accusation be by arrest, the filing of a complaint, or by indictment or information." Ariegwe , ¶ 42 (quoting State v. Larson , 191 Mont. 257, 261, 623 P.2d 954, 957-58 (1981) ). "[I]t is either a formal indictment or information or else the actual restraints imposed by arrest and holding to answer a criminal charge that engage the particular protections of the speedy trial provision of the Sixth Amendment." Ariegwe , ¶ 42 (emphasis added) (quoting Dillingham...
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...of the evidence, or if a review of the record leaves this Court with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made. State v. Snider , 2018 MT 258, ¶ 9, 393 Mont. 166, 429 P.3d 268 (citing Ariegwe , ¶ 119 ). We review whether the factual circumstances establish a speedy trial v......