Court Opinion

ID: 9754470
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:02:13.61092+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:53.920263
License: Public Domain

Hayes, J.,
dissenting. I respectfully dissent. This case represents an unwarranted interference by the judicial branch with the prosecutor’s absolute power to dismiss a criminal charge prior to trial.
On January 18, 1984, defendant was issued a speeding ticket. He elected to have a jury trial and the jury was selected on September 17, 1984. Prior to the swearing of the jury, the State moved to dismiss the case with prejudice — something it had an absolute right to do. The trial judge then informed the deputy state’s attorney that if she dismissed the case, her office or the Winooski Police Department would have to pay the jury costs.
V.R.Cr.P. 48(a) confers upon the state’s attorney the absolute discretion to dismiss a case prior to trial. That rule states:
The attorney for the state may file a written dismissal of an indictment or information and the prosecution shall thereupon terminate. Such a dismissal may not be filed during the trial without the consent of the defendant.
*222Where, as here, a charge is not dismissed because the trial court coerces prosecution of the case by threatening to impose costs, the attempt of the prosecution to dismiss should be regarded as a constructive dismissal and the subsequent verdict should be set aside.
Nothing in the Vermont Constitution nor in our statutes nor in our common law affords any basis for intrusion by a magistrate upon the prosecutorial prerogative. When a judge sheds his robe and assumes the role of advocate, he gets astride a “very unruly horse” and there is no telling where such an interference with the separation of powers will take us.
Not only did the trial judge exceed his authority by refusing to allow the dismissal, he also exceeded legal bounds in his attempt to require the state’s attorney’s office to absorb the cost of court proceedings. 13 V.S.A. § 7253 provides in part that “[t]he costs of prosecution for the breach of a penal law or other offense . . . shall be paid out of the treasury of the state.”
Had the prosecution been allowed to dismiss the case with prejudice as it wanted to do, the defendant would not have been convicted of a speeding ticket violation. To say that defendant suffered no prejudice as a result of the unwarranted invasion of the prosecutor’s discretionary power is to jest with justice and mock fundamental fair play.
Any exercise of power by the executive and legislative branches of government which runs afoul of the Constitution is subject to judicial restraint, but the only check upon the excesses of our own branch is our own sense of self-restraint. See United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 78-79 (1936) (Stone, J., dissenting).
This case, like every other case dealing with the separation of powers,
will become the parent stock from which a motley progeny will spring. In those after years when this case, elevated to high authority by the cold finality of the printed page, is quoted with the customary “It has been said,” perchance another Court will say, “Mayhaps the Potter’s hand trembled at the wheel.” Possibly when that moment comes these words may give that Court a chance to say, “Yea, and a workman standing hard by saw the vase as it cracked.”
Oliver v. City of Raleigh, 212 N.C. 465, 471, 193 S.E. 853, 857 (1937) (Clarkson, J., dissenting).
*223I would vacate the conviction of the defendant and dismiss the cause.