Court Opinion

ID: 9654143
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:07:29.912302+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:34:15.229890
License: Public Domain

CURLEY, J.
¶ 20. (dissenting). The Interstate Agreement on Detainers (IAD) found at Wis. Stat. § 976.05 proclaims that, "The agreement on detainers is hereby enacted into law and entered into by this state with all other jurisdictions legally joined therein ...." It states that, "The contracting states solemnly agree," and then sets out the various provisions to which the states commit themselves. The act declares that the reason why the party states entered into the agreement is that "charges ... and difficulties in securing speedy trial of persons already incarcerated .. . produce uncertainties which obstruct programs of prisoner treatment and rehabilitation." The act also states that the purpose of the agreement is to "encourage the expeditious and orderly disposition of such charges and determination of the proper status of any and all detainers based on untried indictments, informations or complaints." Thus, all the states who have passed the act have contracted to enforce the provisions of the act.
¶ 21. Wisconsin Stat. § 976.05(3)(c) requires:
The department, or warden, or other official having custody of the prisoner shall promptly inform the prisoner of the source and contents of any detainer lodged against the prisoner and shall also inform the prisoner of the prisoner's right to make a request for final disposition of the indictment, information or complaint on which the detainer is based.
*855Thus, once an affected person is notified of the detainer, he or she can notify the "receiving state" that he or she requests a final disposition. Upon receiving such a request, the "receiving state" has 180 days to try the outstanding charge. See Wis. Stat. § 976.05(3)(a).1 However, here Townsend was never in a position to ask for a trial because Illinois violated the act by failing to notify him of the detainer. The trial court and the majority concede that this is the case, but make light of it, arguing that this failure does not require dismissal because the act lists specific situations where dismissal is appropriate and this lapse is not one of them. What the majority fails to point out is that the three situations where the act requires dismissal all assume that *856the affected person knew about the detainer and requested a final disposition. These situations are, as identified by the majority:
(1) if the prisoner requests final disposition under Article III and there is not a trial within 180 days, see Wis. Stat. § 976.05(3)(d); (2) if the receiving state requests temporary custody under Article IV and there is no trial within 120 days of the arrival of the prisoner, see Wis. Stat. § 976.05(4)(e); and (3) if the appropriate receiving authority refuses or fails to accept temporary custody of a prisoner, see Wis. Stat. § 976.05(5)(c).
Majority, ¶ 12. Thus, according to the majority's logic, the "sending state" may simply disregard the initial provision to notify a prisoner of a detainer and the prisoner has no remedy. The majority's view is that it is irrelevant whether a prisoner is never told of the detainer and that the more serious consequence of dismissal comes into play only if one of the three situations listed above is satisfied. If this were indeed the law, I wonder why we bothered to remand this case to the trial court in Townsend's first appeal? He claimed that he was never given proper notification of the Wisconsin charge by the Illinois prison authorities. We could have told him then that regardless of who carries the burden of proving compliance with the act, even if he was correct, he had no remedy.
¶ 22. I also take issue with the majority's claim that Townsend has not shown prejudice. First, as the earlier opinion notes, unbeknownst to Townsend, he was classified as a "moderate escape risk" as a result of the outstanding Wisconsin charge which, presumably, prevented him from being assigned the more desirable tasks while in prison. More importantly, he was prejudiced by the fact that his trial for the Wisconsin charge was delayed for five years. If he had received the *857identical sentence at an earlier trial, he would have already served five years of the nine-year sentence.
¶ 23. Finally, the fact that Wisconsin played no part in this bureaucratic fiasco does not, in my mind, lead to the conclusion that the agreement should be ignored. This state signed on, indeed, contracted with the other states to abide by the terms of the agreement. The failure of a "party state" to follow the rules should not exempt Wisconsin from the consequences. For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent.

 Wisconsin Stat. § 976.05(3) (a) provides:
Whenever a person has entered upon a term of imprisonment in a penal or correctional institution of a party state, and whenever during the continuance of the term of imprisonment there is pending in any other party state any untried indictment, information or complaint on the basis of which a detainer has been lodged against the prisoner, the prisoner shall be brought to trial within 180 days after the prisoner has caused to be delivered to the prosecuting officer and the appropriate court of the prosecuting officer's jurisdiction written notice of the place of his or her imprisonment and his or her request for a final disposition to be made of the indictment, information or complaint, but for good cause shown in open court, the prisoner or the prisoner's counsel being present, the court having jurisdiction of the matter may grant any necessary or reasonable continuance. The request of the prisoner shall be accompanied by a certificate of the appropriate official having custody of the prisoner, stating the term of commitment under which the prisoner is being held, the time already served, the time remaining to be served on the sentence, the amount of good time earned, the time of parole eligibility or date of release to extended supervision of the prisoner and any decisions of the department relating to the prisoner.
(Emphasis added.)