State v. Taylor
| Decision Date | 28 June 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 20030566.,20030566. |
| Parties | STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Bryan Keith TAYLOR, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
Mark L. Shurtleff, Att'y Gen., Laura B. Dupaix, Asst. Att'y Gen., Salt Lake City, for plaintiff.
Lisa Remal, Lori J. Seppi, Salt Lake City, for defendant.
¶ 1 Bryan Keith Taylor appeals his conviction for rape of a child. He challenges the trial court's refusal to grant him a continuance after the State amended its information. He also challenges what he claims to be the trial court's erroneous comments on the evidence in its jury instruction about victim consent. We affirm.
¶ 2 Mr. Taylor was accused of raping a six-year-old girl that he was babysitting. He was charged with one count each of rape of a child, sodomy upon a child, and sexual abuse of a child.1 The State's information alleged that the charged offenses occurred "on or about November 1, 2002, through January 9, 2003."
¶ 3 At trial, the young victim described in detail the alleged rape and the circumstances surrounding it. She explained that she and Mr. Taylor had been in the living room and Mr. Taylor was sitting on the couch. She stated that Mr. Taylor removed his pants and underwear, as well as her underwear but not her nightgown. She explained that he offered her "half a dollar" to "suck on his private," which she described as tasting like urine. She then explained that he picked her up and put her "on him," sitting her bare genitalia on his. The State also introduced as exhibits two pictures that the victim drew of an erect penis and two notes that she had written to her mother. The notes read, with corrected spelling, "Bryan told me to suck on his private and I did it" and "[He] told me to get on him."
¶ 4 During her testimony, she was asked to pinpoint the dates and times the acts occurred. Her answers were imprecise. After both parties had rested their cases, the State moved to amend its information to expand the range of dates for the offenses by pushing back in time the scope of the initial criminal conduct to May 1, 2002.
¶ 5 Mr. Taylor objected to the State's motion to amend its information. He claimed that the State had failed to give him any notice of the change. His objection to the amended information did not, however, include a request for a continuance. The State noted that a continuance was the proper remedy to notice-based prejudice but insisted that a continuance was unnecessary because the new date emerged from evidence introduced during the course of the trial and, although the change was "last-minute," it would not prejudice Mr. Taylor. The trial court agreed, declined to continue the trial, and allowed the State to amend its information. The court reasoned that because Mr. Taylor insisted that he never abused the girl, a change in the time frame of the alleged abuse would not violate Mr. Taylor's substantial rights.
¶ 6 The trial court also took up proposed jury instructions. The State's proposed victim consent instruction stated, Mr. Taylor's counsel objected to the second sentence of this jury instruction, saying, "I certainly have no objection to quoting the statute about consent or lack of consent and how that relates to a child, but I think this goes beyond that and becomes a comment." After some argument on the matter, the trial court denied Mr. Taylor's objection and adopted the consent instruction. The jury convicted Mr. Taylor of both charges. Mr. Taylor appealed.
¶ 7 Mr. Taylor challenges the trial court's refusal to grant him a continuance to meet the State's motion to amend its information. He argues that the denial of a continuance violated his due process rights under the Utah Constitution2 and rule 4(d) of the Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure. The State argues this issue was not preserved because Mr. Taylor's counsel did not specifically request a continuance. However, without invitation, the trial court turned away the option of continuing the trial to permit Mr. Taylor to adjust his defense to meet the amended date. In light of these circumstances, we conclude that the issue was properly preserved.
¶ 8 A trial court's decision to grant a continuance is a matter of discretion, and we review the decision for abuse of that discretion. Seel v. Van Der Veur, 971 P.2d 924, 926 (Utah 1998). An abuse of discretion occurs when a trial court denies a continuance and the resulting prejudice affects the substantial rights of the defendant, such that a "review of the record persuades the court that without the error there was `a reasonable likelihood of a more favorable result for the defendant.'" State v. Knight, 734 P.2d 913, 919 (Utah 1987) (quoting State v. Fontana, 680 P.2d 1042, 1048 (Utah 1984)); see also Utah R.Crim. P. 30(a) ().
¶ 9 Guided by this standard, we examine whether the amended information denied Mr. Taylor adequate notice to meet the charged offenses. "The right to adequate notice in the Utah Constitution requires the prosecution to state the charge with sufficient specificity to protect the defendant from multiple prosecutions for the same crime and to give notice sufficient for the one charged to prepare a defense." State v. Wilcox, 808 P.2d 1028, 1032 (Utah 1991). Beyond requiring a statement of the elements of the offense, however, the test for notice has few rules. It does not, for example, expressly mandate identification of the exact date when an alleged offense occurred. Instead, we require a "weighing of the completeness of the notice and its adequacy for the defendant's purposes against the background of the information legitimately available to the prosecuting authority." Id. In other words, "[a]s long as a defendant is sufficiently apprised of the State's evidence upon which the charge is based so that the defendant can prepare to meet that case, the constitutional requirement is fulfilled." Id. at 1032 n. 1.
¶ 10 We recently had occasion to summarize the information content and communication obligation that the State owes a defendant relating to the nature of the offense with which he is charged. We stated:
The right of an accused to know the nature of the offense with which he is charged is a fundamental right guaranteed by both our federal and state constitutions. This right is rooted in the recognition that when the government exercises its authority to bring criminal charges against a person and thereby places him at risk of losing his liberty, the accused should be entitled to insist that the crime be defined with such reasonable clarity that he can mount a defense. By requiring that an offense be specifically identified, the right to be apprised of the nature of the crime also reinforces the protection against double jeopardy.
Rule 4 of the Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure gives practical expression to these fundamental rights. It defines the charging documents, describes the scope of their content, provides rules of construction, and, of importance here, sets out the limitations on their amendment. Specifically, rule 4(d) states that "the court may permit an indictment or information to be amended at any time before verdict if no additional or different offense was charged and the substantial rights of the defendant are not prejudiced."
State v. Nelson-Waggoner, 2004 UT 29, ¶¶ 17-18, 94 P.3d 186 (quoting Utah R.Crim. P. 4(d)) (footnote and other citations omitted).
¶ 11 In Nelson-Waggoner, the defendant challenged the State's attempt to narrow the claimed dates of a rape by amending the information. 2004 UT 29 at ¶ 4, 94 P.3d 186. The defendant argued that his alibi defense would be undermined by the amended information because the alibi testimony covered a period outside the dates for the offense in the amended information. Id. at ¶ 19. We turned this argument away. Id. at ¶ 21. We held that where a defendant is initially required to defend against a crime potentially committed within a range of possible dates, and the amended information refines the field of dates within the initial range, the defendant's defense is not prejudiced. Id.
¶ 12 We have also acknowledged that in child sexual abuse prosecutions, identifying the specific date, time, or place of the offense is often difficult owing to the inability of young victims to provide this information. Responding to the realities of cognitive development, we have been less demanding of exact times and dates when young children are involved. We have noted that
[i]f we were to hold that . . . no offense could be charged because the alleged victim is too young to testify with certainty concerning the time, dates, or places where the abuse occurred, we would leave the youngest and most vulnerable children with no legal protection. An abuser could escape prosecution merely by claiming that the child's inability to remember the exact dates and places of the abuse impaired the abuser's ability to prepare an alibi defense.
Wilcox, 808 P.2d at 1033.3 We acknowledge that by permitting a prosecution involving a child victim to proceed despite uncertainty over the date, time, and place of the alleged offense, we are balancing the interest of protecting vulnerable and cognitively limited children from exploitation against the interest of an accused to mount a defense. This policy-driven balance cannot be struck using a categorical rule; it will always have a thumb resting on one side of the fulcrum or the other.
¶ 13 Here, Mr. Taylor claims that his substantive rights were...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. Davis
...whether the evidence offered by the State is weak or strong, is in conflict or is not controverted.” Green, 6 P.2d at 181;see also State v. Taylor, 2005 UT 40, ¶ 22, 116 P.3d 360 (same). ¶ 98 Nevertheless, “[a]ny error, defect, irregularity or variance which does not affect the substantial ......
-
State v. Klenz
...it’ " is not time-sensitive and concluded that Victim was "not required to give precise dates of each alleged offense." (Quoting State v. Taylor , 2005 UT 40, ¶ 18, 116 P.3d 360.) Thus, because Defendant was "able to prepare a defense and [was] not in danger of multiple prosecutions for the......
-
State v. Cruz
...that it is the first eighteen "preliminary" instructions that the trial court should have repeated to the jury. 5. In State v. Taylor, 2005 UT 40, 116 P.3d 360, we held that the issue of continuance was properly preserved, even though the appellant did not ask for a continuance at trial, be......
-
State v. Pullman
...date, time, or place of the offense is often difficult owing to the inability of young victims to provide this information.” State v. Taylor, 2005 UT 40, ¶ 12, 116 P.3d 360. “Responding to the realities of cognitive development,” the court wrote, “we have been less demanding of exact times ......