State v. Spearman
| Decision Date | 19 July 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 32,800.,32,800. |
| Parties | STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff–Respondent, v. Marc Alan SPEARMAN, Defendant–Petitioner. |
| Court | New Mexico Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Gary K. King, Attorney General, Nicole Beder, Assistant Attorney General, Ralph E. Trujillo, Assistant Attorney General, Santa Fe, NM, for Respondent.
Law Office of Scott M. Davidson, Scott M. Davidson, Albuquerque, NM, Practicing Law Students of the University of New Mexico School of Law, Kevin Nault, Candra Rivers, for Petitioner.
Law Office of Jamison Barkley LLC, Jamison Barkley, Santa Fe, NM, For Amicus New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.
{1} Speedy trial analysis under the United States Constitution requires a balancing and weighing of several factors, including the length of delay, the cause of the delay, timely assertion of the right, and prejudice to the accused. When, as here, one of those factors—in this case the cause of the delay—weighs heavily against the State based on its own dilatory and deceptive conduct in prosecuting the case, the district court justly may dismiss the charges even though the remaining factors favor the accused only slightly. The district court did so in this instance, but was reversed by the Court of Appeals due to the lack of perceived prejudice to the accused. For the reasons that follow, we reverse the Court of Appeals and remand to the district court for a new speedy trial hearing.
{2} Marc Alan Spearman (Defendant) was charged by information with one count each of practicing architecture without a license, fraud, and forgery on December 3, 2008. The charges stemmed from allegations that Defendant, a licensed architectural draftsman with his own business, provided architectural services that he was not licensed to provide. The first count involved a dispute with a former client over whether Defendant had misrepresented himself as an architect. The second and third counts involved an allegation that he either had forged an architect's seal or altered a sealed design. Defendant has continuously maintained that he had never misrepresented himself as an architect and that the changes he made to the plans at issue were approved by a licensed architect, Charles Pearson. Defendant claims that Mr. Pearson disavowed his approval of the plans to “avoid professional discipline,” after those plans were rejected by the San Juan County Building Department.
{3} Defendant was arrested but released on bond after spending one day in jail. On December 22, 2008, Defendant's attorney filed an entry of appearance and made a demand for a speedy trial. The case was then refiled in district court and a trial date was first set for August 4, 2009.
{4} On June 30, 2009, the State filed its first motion to continue. As grounds for the continuance, the State claimed that a witness “will be out of town and unable to attend the trial.” The court granted the motion and a new trial date was set for October 6, 2009.
{5} In the interim, Defendant filed a motion to exclude witnesses and evidence. A hearing was set for that motion on July 15, 2009. Two days before the hearing the State filed a motion to continue, stating that counsel would be out of the country. According to that motion, “[defense] counsel could not be reached by telephone on July 08, 2009.” The hearing on the motion was rescheduled for September 15, 2009. The record does not contain any indication that a hearing was held on that day or that a hearing scheduled for that day was continued, and it is unclear why.
{6} On September 29, 2009, seven days before the second trial date, the State again filed a motion to continue, claiming to need more time to respond to another of Defendant's motions. The district court rescheduled the trial, now the third trial setting, for January 7, 2010.
{7} On December 18, 2009, the State filed its third motion to continue the trial, overall its fourth motion for a continuance in this case, on the ground that the The motion also stated that “[o]pposing counsel takes no position.” For the third time, the district court granted the motion to continue, and rescheduled the trial for February 9, 2010, the fourth trial date thus far.
{8} On February 3, 2010, six days before the fourth trial setting, the State once again filed a motion to continue. This time the State claimed that the case was being reassigned to a new prosecutor who needed more time to prepare for trial. The motion was granted the next day, February 4, 2010. Although the motion stated that opposing counsel was unavailable, Defendant filed a response formally opposing the motion on that same day, claiming that Ultimately a new trial date was set for April 20, 2010.
{9} On March 16, 2010, Defendant filed a motion to dismiss for violation of his constitutional right to a speedy trial. At this point, more than 15 months had passed since Defendant's indictment, and the trial was still another month away. In addition to the various delays previously discussed, the motion noted that the State had delayed discovery, which defense counsel finally received “the first week of July, three weeks after the first trial setting.” Defendant also stated that, along with his written opposition to the motion to continue the February 9, 2010 trial setting, Defendant had also opposed “the second extension of time (filed January 11, 2010),” although “the petition indicates ‘opposing counsel takes no position.’ ”
{10} The motion further alleged how these delays had prejudiced Defendant. Due to the nature of the pending charges, Defendant had been unable to work in his profession as a draftsman, and had “lost three different jobs as a result of the pending felony charges.” Moreover, Defendant was compelled to file for bankruptcy and had to move as a result of his unemployment. The State never attempted to rebut these allegations of prejudice, and the district court scheduled a hearing on the motion to dismiss for April 14, 2010.
{11} The State filed a written response to the motion two days before the hearing. The State argued that this was a complex case, and therefore, under State v. Garza, 2009–NMSC–038, ¶¶ 2, 48, 146 N.M. 499, 212 P.3d 387, the delay had not yet exceeded the eighteen-month threshold for a complex case, requiring the district court to reject the motion. In the alternative, the State argued that if the district court found the case was of intermediate complexity, the balancing test under Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 530, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972), also required rejection of the motion.
{12} The district court conducted a hearing which began with the judge asking defense counsel about the alleged prejudice to her client. Defense counsel responded by repeating the allegations in the written motion to dismiss, pertaining to lost job opportunities and bankruptcy. The court then inquired specifically about alleged prejudice to the ability to prepare a defense. In response, counsel conceded that Defendant had not suffered any actual prejudice to his defense.
{13} After the short discussion about prejudice, the judge steered the hearing toward a discussion of whether the case should be classified as simple, intermediate, or complex. Defense counsel characterized the charges as simple, but the amount of documents provided during discovery might make it of intermediate complexity. The court opined that “it appears to me that ... this is not a very complicated case,” and then later stated “I think this is a simple case.” The court laid out what the State needed to prove to win its case—
{14} Ultimately, the court found a speedy trial violation and dismissed all of the charges against Defendant. While the district court did not find any prejudice to Defendant, it weighed the length of delay and the assertion of the right heavily against the State. The court weighed the reason for the delay “extremely heavily” against the State. In its order dismissing the charges, the district court stated:
The basis for the State's first Motion to Continue the trial was that a witness would be unavailable. This led the Court to believe that the State was otherwise prepared to proceed to trial. However after that continuance was granted, the State amended its witness list and its exhibit list, and provided Defense Counsel and the Court with multitudinous documents by way of discovery. The Court has since struck those documents from the record. The Court now finds that the State was not prepared to proceed to trial at the time the first continuance was filed. This Court also notes that the second Petition for Extension of Time was based on the allegation that the Court would not be able to set the trial prior to the expiration of the Six–Month Rule. However, this Court had set this matter for trial four previous times within the Rule and the first extension.
The district court ultimately found “that the State was dilatory in its pursuit of this matter,” and dismissal was the appropriate remedy.
{15} The Court of Appeals reversed in a memorandum opinion. State v. Spearman, No. 30,493, slip op. at 8 (N.M.Ct.App. Dec. 10, 2010). The Court of Appeals agreed with the district court that Defendant was not prejudiced and that the other three factors weighed against the State. Id., slip op. at 4, 5–6, 7. However, the Court of Appeals did not agree that the three other factors weighed heavily against the State, as they must under Garza, 2009–NMSC–038, ¶ 39, 146 N.M. 499, 212 P.3d 387, to warrant dismissal of the...
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