Opinion ID: 2621193
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Motion to dismiss for delay in prosecution

Text: Defendant contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to dismiss count one, charging him with the murder of Joyce. He claims that the court should have granted his motion because of the nine-year delay between the murder of Joyce and the date he was charged with the crime, and he contends the failure to dismiss constituted a denial of due process of law. Delay in prosecution that occurs before the accused is arrested or the complaint is filed may constitute a denial of the right to a fair trial and to due process of law under the state and federal Constitutions. A defendant seeking to dismiss a charge on this ground must demonstrate prejudice arising from the delay. The prosecution may offer justification for the delay, and the court considering a motion to dismiss balances the harm to the defendant against the justification for the delay. ( Scherling v. Superior Court (1978) 22 Cal.3d 493, 504-507, 149 Cal.Rptr. 597, 585 P.2d 219; see also People v. Morris (1988) 46 Cal.3d 1, 37, 249 Cal.Rptr. 119, 756 P.2d 843, disapproved on other grounds in In re Sassounian (1995) 9 Cal.4th 535, 543-544, fn. 5, 37 Cal.Rptr.2d 446, 887 P.2d 527; People v. Dunn-Gonzalez (1996) 47 Cal.App.4th 899, 910-912, 55 Cal.Rptr.2d 404.) A claim based upon the federal Constitution also requires a showing that the delay was undertaken to gain a tactical advantage over the defendant. (See United States v. Lovasco (1977) 431 U.S. 783, 795, 97 S.Ct. 2044, 52 L.Ed.2d 752; see also People v. Frazer (1999) 21 Cal.4th 737, 774, 88 Cal.Rptr.2d 312, 982 P.2d 180.) We have observed that [prejudice may be shown by loss of material witnesses due to lapse of time [citation] or loss of evidence because of fading memory attributable to the delay. ( People v. Morris, supra, 46 Cal.3d at p. 37, 249 Cal.Rptr. 119, 756 P.2d 843.) In support of his motion, defendant offered the testimony of several witnesses. Joyce's treating physician, Dr. Einstein, testified that at the time of her illness he suspected paraquat poisoning and requested an autopsy. He believed he had conveyed his suspicion to the district attorney's office, but he did not form an educated conclusion that she died of paraquat poisoning until the mid-1980's. Joseph Johnson, who in 1976 was chief investigator for the Kern County District Attorney's Office, confirmed that in 1976 defendant's third wife, Edith Ballew, had contacted the office and accused defendant of murdering Joyce. Johnson assigned investigator Skinner to look into the accusation, although he did not have any admissible evidence of paraquat poisoning. In 1978 or 1979, a sergeant in the Kern County Sheriffs Department received a similar communication from another of defendant's ex-wives, but found that his office had no record of an investigation against defendant. He contacted the district attorney's office regarding the matter. An investigator at the Kern County Sheriffs Department also received a communication from Edith Ballew accusing defendant of murdering Joyce by the administration of paraquat, but the office took no further action beyond conveying the information to the Bakersfield Police Department. Defendant also called as a witness John Armendariz, who had been an investigator for the Kern County Coroner's Office until 1978. While he was so employed, Edith Ballew related her suspicions to him and he examined the coroner's records regarding Joyce's death. Dr. Ambrosecchia, also of the coroner's office, instructed him regarding the symptoms of paraquat poisoning, and Armendariz decided to send slides prepared at the time of the autopsy to the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland for forensic examination. Dr. Ambrosecchia did not suggest he had any information about the case and, in fact, the autopsy had not been performed by the coroner's office but by staff at Mercy Hospital. At the end of 1977, Armendariz received a letter from the Bethesda laboratory stating that the slides were consistent with paraquat poisoning, but that because they had been prepared incorrectly in an inappropriate preservative, the laboratory could not test for paraquat. In opposition to the motion, the prosecutor offered the testimony of Dr. Bruschi, who admitted Joyce Catlin to the hospital in 1976. The witness declared that at the time of her death he suspected paraquat poisoning but had no proof, particularly because he was informed at the time that no existing laboratory tests on autopsy tissue could disclose paraquat poisoning. Ronald Smith, a forensic toxicologist for the Kern County Coroner's Office, testified that in 1977 a coroner's investigator presented him with a tissue specimen jar containing Joyce's tissue (brain, liver, lung, kidney, and spleen) and asked whether he could analyze the contents for paraquat. After investigation, he determined that there was no toxicological test that could disclose paraquat in the tissue, because the tissue had been preserved improperly. Joyce's tissue was kept in the office for a longer period than normally would be the case, and ultimately was destroyed when a new coroner took office. When Martha died, however, the coroner's office requested an autopsy, and tissue from Martha's body was properly preserved and was tested for paraquat. Defendant contends the delay in charging him with the murder of Joyce caused him prejudice, in that two persons who had attended the autopsy performed on Joyce's body had died before the 1990 trial, namely Dr. Ambrosecchia and Primus Jones, who also was employed by the Kern County Coroner's Office. Defendant also complains of the loss of the letter from the Bethesda Naval Hospital stating that the slides of Joyce's tissue had some characteristics of paraquat poisoning but that no paraquat could be found because of the preservative used. He further complains that the jar of tissue samples referred to by Ronald Smith had been destroyed before he was arrested, that the Bakersfield Police Department records relating to Joyce's murder had been destroyed, and that some of the labels on the tissue blocks that were prepared after Joyce's autopsy had been lost. Finally, defendant contends he was prejudiced by his own loss of memory of the events of 1976 and by his inability to produce alibi witnesses to testify concerning his whereabouts when Joyce ingested paraquat or to testify regarding his lack of access to paraquat at the time. Defendant's claims of prejudice are weak. The evidence indicates that Dr. Ambrosecchia did not perform the autopsy, and there is no evidence suggesting that Ambrosecchia or Primus Jones would have testified favorably to the defense. Various witnesses testified that Joyce's tissue could not be subjected to a chemical analysis for paraquat because it was preserved in formalin rather than frozen, and it appears that the missing letter from the Bethesda Naval Hospital was consistent with this view. The loss of the jar containing tissue samples was insignificant, because preservation in formalin made it impossible to test for paraquat. Defendant does not suggest how records of the police investigation of the crime would have been relevant to his defense. As for defendant's loss of memory and alibi witnesses, the details of defendant's whereabouts at the time Joyce ingested paraquat were not highly significant, given his unlimited access to the victim and the circumstance that the paraquat could have been administered at any point over a lengthy period. Moreover, the delay in prosecution was justified. Because of limitations in forensic science and because of the manner in which Joyce's tissue had been preserved, it would have been extremely difficult or impossible to make out a case against defendant at or near the time of the murder. Even when foul play is suspected, when available medical evidence does not support the suspicion further investigation certainly is justified. (See People v. Archerd (1970) 3 Cal.3d 615, 641-642, 91 Cal. Rptr. 397, 477 P.2d 421.) Prosecutors are under no duty to file charges as soon as probable cause exists but before they are satisfied they will be able to establish the suspect's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.... Investigative delay is fundamentally unlike delay undertaken by the government solely to gain tactical advantage over an accused.... A prosecutor abides by elementary standards of fair play and decency by refusing to seek indictments until he or she is completely satisfied the defendant should be prosecuted and the office of the prosecutor will be able to promptly establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. ( People v. Dunn-Gonzalez, supra, 47 Cal.App.4th at pp. 914-915, 55 Cal.Rptr.2d 404; see also People v. Webb (1993) 6 Cal.4th 494, 528, 24 Cal. Rptr.2d 779, 862 P.2d 779.) By the time defendant was charged, of course, additional evidence of his guilt had emerged particularly his involvement in the paraquat poisoning of two more persons. (See People v. Archerd, supra, 3 Cal.3d at pp. 641-643, 91 Cal.Rptr. 397, 477 P.2d 421 [developing medical and forensic techniques and defendant's additional murders justified the filing of charges 11 years after the commission of a murder].) Contrary to defendant's claim, the justification for the delay far outweighed the weak showing of prejudice presented by defendant. We also observe that there was no evidence that the delay was undertaken in order to gain an advantage over defendant, but instead the evidence suggested the delay was caused by the limits of existing laboratory tests, by a mistake in preserving Joyce's tissue in formalin, and by the early caution of medical experts as to whether to state an opinion on the cause of Joyce's death. The trial court did not err in denying the motion to dismiss for delay in prosecution.