Court Opinion

ID: 9537135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:13:07.014657+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:06.154870
License: Public Domain

McQUADE, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I am unable to agree with the majority opinion’s conclusion that there was no prejudicial misjoinder in the present appeal. Accordingly, I must respectfully dissent.
This state has recognized the necessity of affording the trial judge the power to avoid a multiplicity of trials pursuant to Idaho Criminal Rule 13 which provides:
“Rule • 13. Trial Together Of Complaints, Indictments And Informations. —The court may order two (2) or more complaints, indictments or informations *76or both to be tried together if the offenses and the defendants, if there is more than one (1), could have been joined in a single complaint, indictment or information. The procedure shall be the same as if the prosecution were under such single complaint, indictment or information.”
Whether the circumstances are such as to allow consolidation is determined by a reading of Idaho Criminal Rule 8(b)1 which provides;
“Rule 8.(b) JOINDER OF DEFENDANTS. Two (2) or more defendants may be charged on the same complaint, indictment or information if they are alleged to have participated in the same act or transaction or in the same series of acts or transactions constituting an offense or offenses. Such defendants may be charged in one or more counts together or separately and all of the defendants need not be charged in each count. [As amended.]”
I do not dispute the fact that the kidnapping charges brought against appellant could be properly consolidated with the kidnapping charges filed against his wife pursuant to I.C.R. 8(b). Appellant and his wife were both alleged to have participated jointly in the same act, to wit: kidnapping the two minor children. However, I do not believe that a sufficient connection was shown between the kidnapping offense which was alleged to have occurred on the 28th of December, and the insufficient-check charges, which were alleged to have occurred on the 24th of December to justify a joinder.
The State argued in the motion for joinder before trial, that the checks were written in furtherance of a scheme to kidnap the children. The checks were issued for the purchase of merchandise by appellant who offered to substitute cash for the checks after he was notified that he did not have sufficient funds in the bank to cover the checks. In my view the state has failed to demonstrate the nexus between the insufficient check charges and the kidnapping charge to justify a joinder. While this may not have been clear to the court at the beginning of the trial when appellant made his first motion for severance, after the court directed the jury to return a verdict of acquittal as to appellant on the kidnapping charge (thereby defeating the allegation which supported the joinder), the motion for a separate trial should have been granted.2
This was not a case where there was such a close connection in respect to time, place and occasion between the kidnapping charges and the insufficient funds charges that it would be difficult if not impossible to separate the proof of one charge from the proof of the other.3 These offenses were separate and distinct; complete in themselves; independent of each other; committed at a different time and not provable by the same evidence.
“ . . . joinder cannot be sustained where the parties are not the same, and where the offenses are in no wise parts *77of the same transaction, and must depend upon evidence of a different state of facts as to each or some of them. It cannot be said in such case that all the defendants may not have been embarrassed and prejudiced in their defense, or that the attention of the jury may not have been distracted to their injury in passing upon distinct and independent transactions.” 4
It was an abuse of discretion to join for trial the kidnapping and insufficient check charges brought against appellant with the kidnapping charges filed against appellant’s wife.
BAKES, J., concurring.

. It is well established that the propriety of joinder in eases where there are multiple defendants must be tested by Rule 8(b). See 1 C. Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure, Criminal § 144, at 318 (1969) and cases cited therein.

. In Schaffer v. United States, 362 U.S. 511, 80 S.Ct. 945, 4 L.Ed.2d 921 (1960) ; the court refused to fashion a hard and fast rule that whenever the proof failed on the allegation which originally supported the joinder, then joinder would be error as a matter of law. However, the court went on to say, at 516, 80 S.Ct. at 948,
“We do emphasize, however, that, in such a situation, the trial judge has a continuing duty at all stages of the trial to grant a severance if prejudice does appear. And where, as here, the charge which originally justified joinder turns out to lack the support of sufficient evidence, a trial judge should be particularly sensitive to the possibility of such prejudice.”

.Pointer v. United States, 151 U.S. 396, 14 S.Ct. 410, 38 L.Ed. 208 (1894).

. McElroy v. United States, 164 U.S. 76, 81, 17 S.Ct. 31, 33, 41 L.Ed. 355, 357 (1896).