Winchester v. State

• Decision Date: 30 March 2023
• Docket Number: Aro-21-312
• Parties: DENNIS F. WINCHESTER v. STATE OF MAINE
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

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2023 ME 23

DENNIS F. WINCHESTER v. STATE OF MAINE

No. Aro-21-312

Supreme Court of Maine

March 30, 2023

Argued: October 6, 2022

Aroostook County Unified Criminal Docket docket numbers CR-2019-129, -130, -131, -132, -133, and -134

Lawrence C. Winger, Esq. (orally), Portland, for appellant Dennis F. Winchester Todd R. Collins, District Attorney, 8th Prosecutorial District, Caribou, for appellee State of Maine

Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, and Donald W. Macomber, Asst Atty. Gen. (orally), Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for amicus curiae, Office of the Attorney General

Carol Garvan, Esq. (orally), Zachary L. Heiden, Esq., and Anahita Sotoohi, Esq., American Civil Liberties Union of Maine Foundation, Portland, for amicus curiae American Civil Liberties Union of Maine

Jamesa J. Drake, Esq., Drake Law LLC, Auburn and Rory A. McNamara, Esq. (orally), Drake Law LLC, York, for amicus curiae Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services

Zachary J. Smith, amicus curiae pro se

CONNORS, J.

[¶1] Dennis F. Winchester appeals from a judgment of the post-conviction review (PCR) court (Aroostook County, Stewart, J.) denying his PCR petitions. Winchester argues that his counsel's failures to assert his right to a speedy trial constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. Concluding that the court misconstrued aspects of the relevant law, we vacate the judgment and remand for reconsideration consistent with this opinion. In doing so, we clarify the contours of the speedy trial protection contained in the Maine Constitution and the interplay between a speedy trial claim and an ineffective assistance of counsel claim when counsel fails to raise a viable speedy trial claim.

I. BACKGROUND

A. As of February 2015, Winchester was incarcerated on an earlier criminal conviction.

[¶2] Before the State initiated the cases that are the subject of this appeal, it filed two criminal complaints against Winchester. One of these complaints was dismissed; the other resulted in a conviction for which Winchester was sentenced in February 2015 to five years in prison, with all but three years suspended. These complaints are not the subject of the instant petitions but resulted in Winchester's incarceration during a portion of this case's history.

B. Winchester was charged in six separate cases in 2014 and 2015; in 2017, he was found guilty after trial in one case and pleaded nolo contendere as to the remaining five cases.

[¶3] Between June 2014 and March 2015, the State charged Winchester in six separate cases that are the subject of this appeal.^[1] The following findings of the PCR court, supported by record evidence, describe the chronology of these cases as relevant to the speedy trial issue before us:

• April 3, 2015: The trial court (Aroostook County, Hunter, A.R.J.) signed an order allowing Attorney Jon Plourde-initially appointed to represent Winchester in all the underlying cases except Docket No. CR-2015-067- to withdraw.

• April 12, 2015: Winchester wrote a letter to the clerk of the court asking whether Plourde had filed a motion for a speedy trial. The clerk erroneously responded that Plourde had filed the motion.

• April 28, 2015: Attorney Neil Prendergast was appointed to represent Winchester in all six cases.

• August 3, 2015: Prendergast filed motions to suppress in all dockets. The hearing on the motions was not held until July 20, 2016. As the PCR court found, it is "unclear from the files" why there was an eleven-month period between the filing of the motions and the hearing.

• October 27, 2016: The court signed an order denying the motions, addressing only one of Winchester's arguments as to why the evidence should be suppressed.

• February 27, 2017: Prendergast moved to withdraw as counsel. The court denied the motion and, in a supplemental order, explained that Prendergast could not withdraw so close to trial in Docket No. CR-2015-067, which was scheduled for March 14, 2017.

• March 14, 2017: Trial in Docket No. CR-2015-067 was cancelled due to a snowstorm, after which the court allowed Prendergast to withdraw.^[2]

• April 12, 2017: Attorney Chris Coleman was appointed to represent Winchester.

• May 2017: Winchester completed his sentence for the burglary charge predating the six cases at issue. He continued to be held without bail at the Aroostook County jail throughout the remainder of these proceedings, however, because his bail had been revoked in the DNA case.

• June 29, 2017: Coleman withdrew because he took other employment. Attorney John Tebbetts was appointed as Winchester's counsel on the same day.

• July 5, 2017: Winchester filed a motion for further findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding the October 27, 2016 order. The court granted the motion the following week.

• August 23, 2017: In response to Winchester's motion for further findings of fact and conclusions of law, the court issued an order describing why the motions to suppress had been denied.

• November 9, 2017: Docket No. CR-2014-545 went to trial; Winchester was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.

• December 6, 2017: The DNA case was scheduled for trial. That morning, Winchester pleaded nolo contendere in each of the remaining cases and was sentenced to five-year terms in each, with the sentences to run concurrently to one another but consecutively to the sentence that he received in Docket No. CR-2014-545. Winchester reserved his right to appeal each case based on, inter alia, his right to a speedy trial.

• 2018: Represented by Attorney Tebbetts, Winchester appealed his conviction, arguing that the court erred when it entered orders denying his motions to suppress. We affirmed the trial court's orders on October 18, 2018. State v. Winchester, 2018 ME 142, ¶ 18, 195 A.3d 506. We did not address whether Winchester was deprived of the right to a speedy trial, explaining in a footnote that he had abandoned that issue on appeal by failing to present any developed argument either to the trial court or to us. Id. ¶ 12 n.4.

In total, the time between when Winchester was initially charged and when each case was resolved ranged from thirty-three to forty-two months.

[¶4] Winchester filed PCR petitions in January 2019. The PCR court denied his petitions, applying the federal test from Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 530 (1972), to determine whether Winchester's speedy trial rights had been violated. Winchester then sought a certificate of probable cause from us, arguing that he had been denied effective assistance of counsel due to his attorneys' failures to raise his speedy trial claims. We denied his request as to Plourde, but we granted it as to Prendergast and Tebbetts.

II. DISCUSSION

[¶5] We review a PCR court's factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. Fortune v. State, 2017 ME 61, ¶ 12, 158 A.3d 512. Because this analysis often involves mixed questions of law and fact, we "apply the most appropriate standard of review for the issue raised depending on the extent to which that issue is dominated by fact or by law." Id. ¶ 13.

A. Winchester is entitled to a dismissal of the indictments if he can show that his counsel's ineffectiveness prejudiced his ability to obtain dismissal of charges based on a violation of his right to speedy trial.

[¶6] In assessing a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, we apply the standards set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). See, e.g., Theriault v. State, 2015 ME 137, ¶ 13, 125 A.3d 1163. A successful showing of ineffective assistance of counsel "requires proof of [(1)] deficient performance and [(2)] resulting prejudice." In re Child of Kenneth S., 2022 ME 14, ¶ 28, 269 A.3d 242. Counsel's performance is deficient if it falls below "an objective standard of reasonableness," Ford v. State, 2019 ME 47, ¶ 11, 205 A.3d 896 (quotation marks omitted), i.e., if the performance falls below what is expected of "an ordinary fallible attorney," Philbrook v. State, 2017 ME 162, ¶ 7, 167 A.3d 1266 (quotation marks omitted).

[¶7] To prove resulting prejudice, a petitioner must show that the "errors of counsel actually had an adverse effect on the defense." Ford, 2019 ME 47, ¶ 11, 205 A.3d 896 (alteration and quotation marks omitted). The petitioner must establish "a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different." Id. ¶ 14 (quotation marks omitted). When a petitioner challenges a conviction based on a guilty plea, the petitioner "must show that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial." Laferriere v. State, 1997 ME 169, ¶ 7, 697 A.2d 1301 (quotation marks omitted). "[A] reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome." Id. ¶ 8 (quotation marks omitted).

[¶8] The normal remedy when counsel is ineffective, a new trial, does not satisfy constitutional requirements if the speedy trial provision has been violated. Barker, 407 U.S. at 522 (holding that dismissal is the "only possible remedy" for a speedy trial violation); State v. Smith, 400 A.2d 749, 752 (Me. 1979) ("The denial of the right to a speedy trial, guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States and Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution of the State of Maine, has but one extremely harsh remedy, dismissal of the charges.").

[¶9] Given this legal predicate, when a defendant raises an ineffectiveness claim based on his counsel's failure to pursue a motion to dismiss on speedy trial grounds, we must consider whether such a motion to dismiss, had it been filed by counsel, would or should have resulted in a...