State v. Wright, Supreme Court No. S-15917.

• Court: Supreme Court of Alaska (US)
• Writing for the Court: MATTHEWS, Senior Justice.
• Citation: 404 P.3d 166
• Decision Date: 22 September 2017
• Docket Number: Supreme Court No. S-15917.
• Parties: STATE of Alaska, Petitioner, v. Sean WRIGHT, Respondent.

404 P.3d 166

STATE of Alaska, Petitioner,
v.
Sean WRIGHT, Respondent.

Supreme Court No. S-15917.

Supreme Court of Alaska.

September 22, 2017

Timothy W. Terrell, Assistant Attorney General, Anchorage, and Jahna Lindemuth, Attorney General, Juneau, for Petitioner.

Margie Mock, Contract Attorney, Anchorage, and Quinlan G. Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for Respondent.

404 P.3d 168

Before: Stowers, Chief Justice, Maassen, Bolger, and Carney, Justices, and Matthews, Senior Justice.^* [Winfree, Justice, not participating.]

OPINION

MATTHEWS, Senior Justice.

I. INTRODUCTION

In November 1999 the State filed a felony information charging Sean Wright with sexually abusing two young girls. Wright was not arrested or indicted on these charges until almost five years later. He moved to dismiss the charges, claiming, among other reasons, that his right to a speedy trial had been violated. The superior court denied this motion. On appeal, the court of appeals ordered a reassessment of Wright's claim.

We granted the State's petition for review and now decide two questions:

(1) Do speedy trial rights begin when a felony information is filed, or only when a defendant is arrested or indicted?

(2) Did the superior court err when it decided that Wright was more responsible than the State for the delay?

We conclude that speedy trial time begins to run from the filing of an information. We also find that the superior court did not err in attributing primary responsibility for the delay to Wright.

II. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

A. Facts

The State began investigating Wright in February 1999 after receiving a report that Wright had sexually abused his eleven-year-old stepdaughter, K.A. K.A. and her mother, Evelyn Wright, had confronted Wright about the abuse, and Wright moved out of the home, at which point they informed the police. Alaska State Trooper Investigator Ruth Josten interviewed K.A. and Evelyn on February 16 and 17, 1999. Evelyn indicated that Wright may have also abused another child, M.C., the daughter of his prior long-term partner. On March 4, Josten made contact with M.C., who confirmed that Wright had sexually abused her a decade prior.

When the investigation into the sexual abuse began, Wright left the state. Initially, he stayed with his brother in Arkansas. He subsequently decided to leave Alaska permanently and, over the next five years, worked various jobs in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Minnesota.

At first, Wright stayed in contact with Evelyn via phone and letter. He called Evelyn on February 28 and March 1, 1999, but would not say where he was. Josten placed a phone trap on Evelyn's phone on March 2. With the phone trap, the Matanuska Telephone Authority identified phone calls from Wright to Evelyn on March 9, 10, and 11 as coming from Arkansas. In phone calls between February 28 and April 1, Wright expressed concern that the calls might be monitored by police, checked to see whether a warrant had been issued for him, indicated that he was attempting to retain counsel, and expressed his desire to achieve a non-criminal resolution of the allegations against him.

In mid-March 1999, he returned to Alaska. He stayed with a friend in Anchorage except for the weekend of March 20-21, which he spent with Evelyn in Wasilla. While back in Alaska he sold land to a friend, arranged to sell his truck, and placed his personal belongings in storage. On March 22 he formally resigned from his job and took a "red-eye" flight that night back to Arkansas. While Wright was waiting for his flight out of Alaska, he wrote to a friend:

I don't know what's going on but I got a bad feeling, time to travel while I can. Note to trust no one, I won't call for a long time and don't know where I'm going yet. Have to stick to myself and stay away from family and friends till my attorney knows what's happening and how to deal with it. So I act like a termite for a while and work where I can to pay lawyer and survive.

404 P.3d 169

Josten did not learn that Wright had been in Alaska until May 1999. Wright did not return to Alaska until after he was arrested in Minnesota in 2004.

Wright telephoned Evelyn frequently for several months after permanently leaving the state, but according to Evelyn, this regular contact ended after a warrant was issued. On May 6, 1999 Wright wrote to Evelyn to send her an address where he could receive mail. The address was his brother's in Vilonia, Arkansas, but it was clear this was only a forwarding address. He wrote, "Bill will get my mail to me were [sic] I'm at." This was the only address Evelyn and Josten had for Wright.¹ The record reflects that Wright also occasionally received mail at several mailing addresses in Russellville, Arkansas, where he at times lived with a girlfriend.² And Wright kept his brother apprised of where he was working.

Josten completed her investigation in June 1999. She forwarded the information she had gathered to the district attorney's office for review, and, aware that Wright had fled the state, requested that an extraditable arrest warrant issue. Her request was declined, "inexplicably," according to the superior court.

Five months later, in November 1999, the State filed a criminal information with the court charging Wright with eleven counts of sexual abuse of a minor. On November 16, 1999, an arrest warrant was issued for Wright. But the warrant was non-extraditable, so it was not placed in the FBI's National Crime Information Center system.

In the summer of 1999, Josten was reassigned. Between then and 2004, she periodically checked for information about Wright using databases available to Alaska State Troopers, but she made no other efforts to locate Wright.

Wright obtained an Arkansas driver's license in 2001. And between 1999 and 2004 he worked at a number of nuclear facilities requiring security clearance. Had his warrant been entered into the National Crime Information Center database, his employers would have discovered it.

On September 17, 2004, almost five years after the felony information was filed, Alaska State Trooper Sergeant Iliodor Kozloff received an inquiry from an employer in Minnesota about Wright.³ Sgt. Kozloff confirmed there was an arrest warrant for Wright, but discovered that it was non-extraditable. He then contacted the district attorney's office, which decided to obtain an extraditable warrant. Wright was subsequently arrested and brought back to Alaska.

On October 3, 2004, Wright was arraigned on the charges filed in 1999. On October 12, 2004, a grand jury indicted Wright on eighteen counts of sexual abuse of a minor covering the abuse of K.A., M.C., and a third girl, T.W.⁴

B. The Superior Court Proceedings

In August 2005 Wright filed a motion to dismiss the indictment claiming that the delay in prosecuting him violated his due process and speedy trial rights. After extensive briefing and an evidentiary hearing spread over seven non-consecutive days, Superior Court Judge Philip Volland denied the motion in a 13-page written opinion. The discussion portion of Judge Volland's opinion is set out in the appendix.

With respect to the due process claim, the court determined that Wright had failed to show actual prejudice or unreasonable delay, and found Wright largely responsible for the delay.

404 P.3d 170

As to the speedy trial claim, the court implicitly determined that the speedy trial clock began to run when the information was filed in November 1999. The court then applied a four-factor balancing test to determine whether the delay deprived Wright of his right to a speedy trial. The test, laid out by the Supreme Court of the United States in Barker v. Wingo, requires a court to consider: (1) the length of the delay, (2) the reasons for the delay, (3) the defendant's assertion of the speedy trial right, and (4) prejudice to the defendant.⁵ The superior court found that none of the latter three factors favored Wright.

Wright unsuccessfully sought interlocutory review in state and federal courts.⁶ He also brought numerous other motions before the case finally came to trial in May 2009. Wright renewed his speedy trial motion just prior to trial. Superior Court Judge Michael Spaan denied this motion, relying on Judge Volland's decision. Before the jury began deliberations Wright again renewed his motion to dismiss on speedy trial grounds. Judge Spaan again denied this motion. The jury convicted Wright on eight counts of sexual abuse of a minor involving M.C. and five counts involving K.A. After Wright was sentenced, he appealed to the court of appeals.⁷

C. The Court Of Appeals' Decision

The court of appeals held that Wright's speedy trial claim under the federal constitution was without merit.⁸ The court explained that federal courts have held that such claims do not begin to run until either an arrest or the filing of formal charges in a court having jurisdiction to try the accused, whichever comes first.⁹ Since the...