Opinion ID: 2632550
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: post-appeal matters

Text: ¶ 49 Before addressing the merits of Menzies' appeal, we must first dispose of two additional procedural matters that arose after Menzies' appeal was filed with this court. Each party has filed with this court a motion regarding issues that are extraneous to the substantive issues on appeal. We first address the motion filed by the State and then the motion filed by Menzies. ¶ 50 Following Menzies' record designation, the State moved to strike certain transcripts that it contended were not part of the record considered by the district court in ruling on the rule 60(b) motion. We conditionally granted the State's motion, requiring Menzies' counsel to file an affidavit indicating whether the transcripts were referenced during the rule 60(b) proceedings and explaining the transcripts' relevance to those proceedings. After both the affidavit and the briefing in this matter were filed, the State renewed its motion, requesting that we strike from the record transcripts that were not before the district court as well as Menzies' arguments relying on the challenged transcripts. ¶ 51 We have reviewed Menzies' citations to the challenged transcripts and conclude that the State's arguments are without merit and irrelevant. Contrary to the State's assertions, several of the transcripts challenged by the State are not even referenced in Menzies' briefing. Moreover, some of the transcripts actually were before the district court during the rule 60(b) proceedings. Most importantly, every factual proposition for which Menzies cites the challenged transcripts is supported by citations to other portions of the record that were before the district court during the rule 60(b) proceedings. We therefore deny the State's motion to strike the portions of Menzies' argument that rely on the challenged transcripts. We note that we have not relied on those transcripts that were not before the district court for any portion of this opinion, as we generally do not consider new evidence on appeal. ¶ 52 After oral argument, Menzies' counsel filed a letter styled as supplemental authoritythe third she has filed since we took this matter under advisementas well as a motion requesting that we take judicial notice of letters and oral statements made by counsel for the State in two other proceedings. [6] Menzies' counsel also made a vague request that we require the State's counsel to provide all relevant information related to the other proceedings. According to Menzies, the State has taken a position in these other proceedings that is counter to the State's argument in this case. Namely, the state argued that criminal defendants should not engage in ex parte communications with the court but then claimed that Menzies is negligent for not contacting the district court to notify it of Brass' errors. Because this information is irrelevant to our decision, we deny Menzies' motion. ¶ 53 Before addressing the merits of this case, we pause to comment on the litigation the parties have engaged in regarding the two matters discussed above. The voluminous record in this case covers twenty years of litigation, both during the trial stage and post-conviction phase. The briefing in this case is also extensive and includes a multitude of legal arguments as well as references to portions of the record relating to the entire twenty-year history of the case. Resolving a case such as this is a time-intensive task. Yet the parties chose to add to that task by filing the two motions discussed above, each of which also involved extensive briefing. In fact, the briefing on these two motions alone far exceeds the quantity of briefing we frequently receive on entire cases. We do not consider such voluminous briefing on extraneous issues to be a particularly good use of judicial resources. We therefore admonish both the parties in this case and parties appearing before us in the future to constrain their litigiousness to issues both relevant and material to the matters before this court.