Court Opinion

ID: 9549761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:24:32.544476+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:53.475427
License: Public Domain

HUNTLEY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because I do not believe that it is necessary to deprive a defendant of his constitutionally granted right to counsel in order to accommodate trial court calendars — both objectives can be accomplished when the system is intelligently and appropriately administered.
When one cuts through the verbiage and recitation of facts which tend to obscure the focal point of this case, the fact is that Carman was granted by the court an opportunity to seek a private attorney. That private attorney met with him before the court on March 12th, 1985, expressing a willingness to assume the defense of the case if the court, rather than requiring him to go to trial just a short fourteen days later, on March 26, would allow a resetting of the trial until late April or early May in order to give him opportunity to prepare.
The request was reasonable on its face and the denial of that time for preparation was an abuse of discretion on its face.
The excuse is offered that the trial court’s calendar was “socked in for months” but the fact is that we have many judges in Idaho who do not have full calendars at any given time and a simple call to the Administrative Office of the Courts would have made available another judge and another courtroom at any reasonably convenient time.
As the record establishes, even the public defender was not prepared and ultimately he was granted a vacation of the trial date and time to get prepared.
The Court of Appeals opinion which we are reviewing contains the following statement:
The public defender reportedly did not become fully involved in the case until the private counsel issue was settled on March 12. Moreover, the public defender was burdened with a heavy load of other criminal trials involving serious offenses at about the same time. Further, the public defender had only recently received copies of reports in Carman’s case, made by several witnesses for the prosecution, and consequently had insufficient time to review these reports.
Is one to suppose that only public defenders and not private attorneys have heavy *194work schedules and difficulty taking over a case with only fourteen days’ preparation time?
This case is another example of the effect that public pressures are exerting upon Idaho’s trial and appellate judges to rush to trial and conviction due to an ever increasing rate of crime in this country regardless of the damage to constitutional principles.
Trial and appellate judges should be mindful of the fact that while we have a duty to expedite all trials, that the most fundamental safeguard of our democratic way of life under our federal and Idaho constitutions is the honoring and implementation of the Bill of Rights. Each time a trial or appellate court permits those rights to be eroded for the sake of expediency, our form of government is nudged toward that which exists in totalitarian states. Would that Idaho’s trial and appellate courts would take a broader view of their responsibility to support and defend our constitutions.