Opinion ID: 2352739
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: denial of motion to strike the commonwealth's response

Text: Appellant's first claim of error is that the trial court erred in refusing to strike the Commonwealth's response to his RCr 11.42 motion. On April 15, 2000, Appellant filed his RCr 11.42 motion with the trial court and the trial court entered an order staying Appellant's execution. The Commonwealth did not file its response until July 20, 2000. Appellant argues that because the response was filed more than twenty days after the filing of the RCr 11.42 motion, it was filed well outside the twenty-day period provided for in RCr 11.42(4), and that the response should have been stricken as a result. The trial court ruled that the response was not filed late because it is not clear that the circuit clerk mailed the notice required by RCr 11.42, or at the very least, that no notice was mailed before July 21, 2000. The trial court was correct. The circuit clerk is responsible for notifying the Attorney General and the Commonwealth's Attorney in writing as soon as an RCr 11.42 motion is filed. [11] The Commonwealth has twenty days after the date of mailing of notice by the clerk ... in which to serve an answer on the movant. [12] Appellant, however, has offered no proof that the clerk sent notice of Appellant's motion to the Commonwealth more than twenty days before the Commonwealth served its answer. Appellant claims that the Commonwealth was given a copy of the motion on April 15, 2000, and that this was sufficient notice. While it may be true that the Commonwealth received a copy of the motion, such receipt does not start the running of the twenty days. And the simple fact of the matter is that the computer-generated case history record contains no entry indicating that the clerk ever notified the Commonwealth. The only reference to notification in the record is a handwritten note, dated July 21, 2000 (one day after the Commonwealth filed its response), which states that the clerk sent a copy of the motion to the Attorney General on that date. Appellant points out that on April 18, 2000, the Commonwealth served a motion seeking to prohibit ex parte filings in the RCr 11.42 proceeding. He implies that this proves that the clerk served the Commonwealth with notice of the RCr 11.42 motion. It is equally possible, however, that the Commonwealth filed this motion in response to Judge Messer's order, dated April 15, staying the execution of Appellant due to receipt of a motion under RCr 11.42 or in response to the RCr 11.42 motion. This is supported by the fact that the Commonwealth's motion does not mention any details of Appellant's RCr 11.42 motion, instead stating simply that [s]ome capital RCr 11.42 litigants have in the past attempted to file certain motions. . . ex parte.  Furthermore, mere awareness of the fact that Appellant had filed a motion is insufficient to begin running the response period allowed under RCr 11.42(4). Instead, the rule explicitly states that the period begins upon receipt by the Commonwealth of written notification from the clerk. [13] That the Commonwealth knew of Appellant's motion is irrelevant. Given that the trial court found that the Commonwealth's response was filed within twenty days of receipt of notice, if indeed notice was ever sent out, we cannot say that the trial court erred in refusing to strike the response from the record. We also note that it is unclear that the trial court would have been required to strike the Commonwealth's response if it had been filed late. Such a decision would have been within the trial court's sound discretion.