Opinion ID: 4564599
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: analysis

Text: [3] Liming contends that he was entitled to absolute discharge because the State violated his statutory right to a speedy trial. The statutory right to a speedy trial is set forth in § 29-1207 and Neb. Rev. Stat. § 29-1208 (Reissue 2016). State v. Vela-Montes, 287 Neb. 679, 844 N.W.2d 286 (2014). Section 29-1207(1) provides in part that “[e]very person indicted or informed against for any offense shall be brought to trial within six months,” but adds that “such time shall be computed as provided in this section.” The statutory caveat that the 6-month time period is to be computed as provided in § 29-1207 is important, because that section provides a number of circumstances in which the 6-month clock to bring a defendant to trial is essentially stopped. See § 29-1207(4). But, if a defendant is not brought to trial before the 6-month deadline as extended by excluded periods, he or she is entitled to absolute discharge from the offense charged and for any other offense required by law to be joined with that offense. See Vela-Montes, supra. [4] To calculate the deadline for trial under the speedy trial statutes, a court must exclude the day the State filed the - 480 - Nebraska Supreme Court Advance Sheets 306 Nebraska Reports STATE v. LIMING Cite as 306 Neb. 475 information, count forward 6 months, back up 1 day, and then add any time excluded under § 29-1207(4). Lovvorn, supra. Because the information in this case was filed on October 16, 2018, the State had until April 16, 2019, to bring Liming to trial if there were no excluded days. The parties agree, however, that a number of days were excluded. The parties agree the 96-day period between the filing of the plea in abatement and the court’s order ruling upon it should be excluded under § 29-1207(4)(a). The parties also agree that the 36-day period between the granting of Liming’s motion to continue the arraignment and the next scheduled arraignment date should be excluded under § 29-1207(4)(b). Finally, the parties agree that the 22-day period from the granting of Liming’s motion to continue the pretrial conference to the rescheduled pretrial conference should also be excluded under § 29-1207(4)(b). We agree with the parties that all of the preceding days are excluded. However, these 154 excluded days would extend the time period to bring Liming to trial to only September 17, 2019, nearly a week prior to when Liming filed his motion for absolute discharge. Whether Liming was timely brought to trial thus depends on whether, as the district court determined, additional time is excluded as a result of the continuance of the settlement conference. On this question, the parties disagree. The State argues that the district court correctly determined that a period of excluded time arose from the continuance of the settlement conference under § 29-1207(4)(b). That subsection provides that a “period of delay resulting from a continuance granted at the request or with the consent of the defendant or his or her counsel” is to be excluded. Id. The State reasons that since Liming’s counsel did not object to the State’s request for a continuance, the resulting period of delay is excluded under § 29-1207(4)(b). Liming does not dispute that the continuance occurred with the consent of his counsel. Neither does he disagree that some continuances requested by or agreed to by a defendant or his or - 481 - Nebraska Supreme Court Advance Sheets 306 Nebraska Reports STATE v. LIMING Cite as 306 Neb. 475 her counsel will result in excluded time. Instead, Liming takes the position that the delay occasioned by the continuance of a settlement conference does not result in a period of excluded time. He asserts this is the case because a settlement conference is “not recognized in Nebraska law in the context of a criminal case” and is not a “proceeding” for purposes of the speedy trial statute. Brief for appellant at 13, 14. In support of his assertion that a settlement conference is not recognized in Nebraska law in criminal cases, he claims that settlement conferences are not mentioned in the Nebraska criminal procedure statutes or discussed in Nebraska appellate criminal cases. His argument that a settlement conference is not a proceeding draws on a definition of that term we adopted in interpreting it in § 29-1207(4)(a). In that context, we interpreted it to mean “‘any application to a court of justice, however made, for aid in the enforcement of rights, for relief, for redress of injuries, for damages, or for any remedial object.’” State v. Murphy, 255 Neb. 797, 803, 587 N.W.2d 384, 389 (1998). In order to decide whether the delay caused by the continuance of the settlement conference resulted in a period of excluded time, we must interpret § 29-1207(4)(b). See State v. Lovvorn, 303 Neb. 844, 932 N.W.2d 64 (2019). Our basic principles of statutory interpretation require us to give statutory language its plain and ordinary meaning. See State ex rel. Peterson v. Creative Comm. Promotions, 302 Neb. 606, 924 N.W.2d 664 (2019). Those same principles prohibit us from reading a meaning into a statute that is not warranted by the legislative language or reading anything plain, direct, or unambiguous out of a statute. See In re Estate of Radford, 304 Neb. 205, 933 N.W.2d 595 (2019). Liming’s argument cannot survive an application of these principles, as we will explain below. First, Liming’s argument finds no support in the language of § 29-1207(4)(b). Aside from the requirement that the contin­ uance be granted at the request of or with the consent of the - 482 - Nebraska Supreme Court Advance Sheets 306 Nebraska Reports STATE v. LIMING Cite as 306 Neb. 475 defendant or defense counsel, that subsection puts no restrictions on the types of continuances that lead to excluded time. And unlike § 29-1207(4)(a), the term “proceeding” does not appear in § 29-1207(4)(b). Accordingly, even if Liming is correct that a court-ordered settlement conference is not specifically authorized by Nebraska statute or does not meet the § 29-1207(4)(a) definition of “proceeding,” it does not follow that a delay caused by the continuance of a settlement conference results in no excluded time under § 29-1207(4)(b). In addition, by arguing that only certain continuances result in excluded time under § 29-1207(4)(b), Liming is asking us to read meaning into a statute that is not warranted by its language. Not only does this run counter to our principles of statutory interpretation, we recently rejected a very similar argument. In Lovvorn, supra, the defendant argued that only when a continuance directly results in the postponement of a scheduled trial date is the resulting period of delay excluded from the speedy trial calculation. We rejected the argument, concluding that § 29-1207(4)(b) provides for excludable time “whenever there is a ‘period of delay resulting from a continuance granted at the request or with the consent of the defendant or his or her counsel.’” Lovvorn, 303 Neb. at 850, 932 N.W.2d at 69. Because the delay caused by the continuance in Lovvorn met this definition, we found it resulted in excluded time. For essentially the same reason we rejected the defend­ant’s argument in Lovvorn, we find that the delay caused by the continuance of the settlement conference in this case resulted in excluded time under § 29-1207(4)(b). The district court ordered the parties to, on June 18, 2019, participate in a settlement conference and, on the same day, appear in court to either enter a plea or schedule the trial. Because of the continuance to which Liming’s counsel agreed, the parties were not obligated to do so until July 9. There was thus a period of delay resulting from a continuance granted with the consent of defendant’s counsel. Such a period of delay results in excluded time under the language of § 29-1207(4)(b). - 483 - Nebraska Supreme Court Advance Sheets 306 Nebraska Reports STATE v. LIMING Cite as 306 Neb. 475 Having found that the continuance of the settlement conference resulted in excluded time, this leaves only a determination of how many days were excluded. As we made clear in Lovvorn, supra, the excluded time arising as a result of a continuance begins the day after the continuance is granted and runs to and includes the day on which the continuance ends. Here, the day after the continuance was granted was May 25, 2019, and the continuance ended on July 9 when the settlement conference was held. There were thus 46 excluded days as a result of the continuance of the pretrial conference. The existence of another 46 excluded days means that the State could timely bring Liming to trial by November 2, 2019. Because Liming filed his motion for absolute discharge on September 23, his statutory right to a speedy trial had not been violated and the district court did not err in overruling his motion.