Opinion ID: 2120348
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: January 23, 2002, to April 10, 2002 (77 days)

Text: The final excludable period is that resulting from the prosecution's motion to continue the trial scheduled for January 23, 2002, because a key witness, Dwain Brown, was not available. In its motion, the State asserted that Brown's testimony was material to its case and that it had exercised due diligence in obtaining his testimony from trial. The State issued a subpoena for Brown on September 24, 2001, and had maintained contact with him for the past year through an investigator who worked for the prosecuting attorney's office. In addition, the State averred that there was a reasonable basis to believe that they would obtain Brown's testimony because they now had knowledge of Brown's whereabouts. The trial court held a hearing on the State's motion on January 22, 2002. At that hearing, defense counsel stated that he did not object to the grant of a continuance, but questioned whether the continuance would be an excludable period of time if an issue arose with regard to speedy trial. The trial court granted the continuance, but reserved any ruling on the issue of the excludability of the continuance, as a speedy-trial violation had not yet been implicated. The trial was then scheduled for April 10. Thereafter, on February 11, the State requested that the trial court issue a ruling with regard to whether the continuance granted at the State's behest would be excluded under the speedy-trial rule. At that time, defense counsel objected to the time being excluded, arguing that the State could have procured the witness and had failed to show that it exercised due diligence in that regard. The trial court disagreed and ruled that the period from January 22 to April 10 would be excluded. Pursuant to Rule 28.3(d)(1), a continuance granted at the request of the prosecuting attorney shall be excluded in computing the time for trial where the continuance is granted because of the unavailability of evidence material to the State's case when due diligence has been exercised to obtain such evidence and there are reasonable grounds to believe it will be available at a later date. See Miles, 348 Ark. 544, 75 S.W.3d 677; Chenowith, 341 Ark. 722, 19 S.W.3d 612. The State presented evidence that Brown, as a witness to the murder, was material to its case and that it had exercised due diligence in obtaining Brown's presence for trial. The State also averred that it had information regarding Brown's whereabouts and, thus, it was likely that he would be available to testify at a later date. Accordingly, the period from January 22, 2002, to April 10, 2002, was properly excluded. In sum, the foregoing periods make up a total of 367 days that are excludable from the calculation of the one-year period for speedy trial. This is more than sufficient to overcome the 237 days beyond the one-year period in which Appellant was tried. We thus affirm the trial court's denial of Appellant's motion to dismiss.