Court Opinion

ID: 9858190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:18:07.346214+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:53:28.293075
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
The opinion of the court recognizes that it is the State’s duty to effectuate the policy of bringing a defendant to trial within the time required by Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 27(2)(b). The responsibility for carrying out the mandate of the rule falls upon the court and not the prosecutor. See State v. Hines, 225 N.W.2d 156, 160-61. It could not be otherwise because it is the court which is charged by law with the responsibility of fixing the time of trial. Under Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 18(l)(a), this must be done upon the entry of plea of not guilty — in fixing the time of trial, the defendant’s right to speedy trial under rule 27(2)(b) should be the paramount consideration.
The defendant entered a plea of not guilty on April 10, 1982. Rather than assigning his case for trial within the 90-day period at that time as provided in rule 18(l)(a), no trial assignment was made until May 29, 1982. At that time, because the *281final week of the 90-day period coincided with a judicial conference, the defendant agreed that his trial could commence on June 22, 1982, eight days after the 90-day period was to expire. The State concedes that such agreement was expressly conditioned upon no further delay occurring as to time of trial.
For his consideration in accommodating the judges concerning their conference activities, defendant was rewarded by a total lack of consideration by the court in accommodating his right of speedy trial under rule 27(2)(b). First, his case was scheduled behind the trial of another defendant which did not have to be tried on June 22 in order to accommodate that defendant’s speedy trial rights. Second, when he again made the court aware of the fact on the morning of trial that he would not further waive his right to speedy trial, the court refused to try his ease ahead of the case which had been placed first on the schedule. In combination, these two occurrences add up to a clear and totally unexcused violation of defendant’s rights under rule 27(2)(b).
The opinion of the court seeks to excuse this insensitivity to defendant’s procedural rights by the fact that the particular judge assigned to try cases in Jefferson County on June 22, 1982, was not aware that a speedy trial problem existed until a jury had already been called to try the first assigned case on that date. Rather than being an excuse for the denial of defendant Bond’s rights under rule 27(2)(b), this circumstance should be viewed in precisely the opposite manner.
When defendant Bond conditioned his consent to the June 22 trial date, which was eight days beyond the time provided by law, upon no further trial delay, it at once became the responsibility of the court to give that case priority over other assigned cases not facing speedy trial dismissals. Such priority arose even though the other cases had been placed in the assignment first. There is no explanation whatsoever made by the State why any existing conflict was not resolved in favor of defendant’s right to speedy trial during the more than three-week period in which such resolution might have been accomplished. The fact that the judge assigned to Jefferson County still had the problem on June 22 and, indeed, had not even been told he had the problem is clear evidence of neglect in the assignment process, a circumstance which precludes a finding of good cause for the order continuing the trial beyond June 22.
In addition, when the judge in Jefferson County was made aware of the problem, there was still time to have done something about it. Rather than acting to accord the defendant the priority to which he was entitled, the court made a conscious election to establish a system of priorities which subordinated defendant’s speedy trial rights to the trial of another case for which no speedy trial claim was imminent.
The majority of this court seek to justify what was done by approving priorities similar to those of the district court. The reliance which it places in this regard on Standard 12-1.1 of the American Bar Association Standards For Criminal Justice (1982 Supp.) is misplaced. That commentary is an aspirational concept of “speedy trial” in an abstract setting where no clear understanding of the boundaries of the speedy trial guarantee is otherwise established. The commentary is not relevant on the issue of good cause for deviating from boundaries which have clearly been fixed by legislative enactment. It is simply wrong to suggest as the majority implies that in applying the guarantees of rule 27(2)(b), the rights of a defendant in custody, whose statutory right to speedy trial is not imminent, may be accorded a higher priority than those of a defendant who faces loss of such rights. There is no evidence that the legislature, in enacting rule 27(2)(b) intended to modify the priorities which naturally flow from application of that rule on the basis of (a) jury versus nonjury trials, or (b) incarcerated defendants versus defendants free on bond. Absent a specific legislative directive in this regard, such a deviation from the clear provisions of the rule is a conclusion which stands the legislature’s directive on its head.
*282Any claim that good cause flows from the prevention of economic waste which would have attended sending the jury panel home so as to commence trial of defendant’s non-jury trial within the speedy trial period is equally unpersuasiye. Such a claim focuses on the situation which confronted the judge on June 22. The court had been made aware of the need to try defendant on that date more than three weeks prior thereto and had done nothing to reschedule the conflicting jury trial. Such inaction on the part of the court precludes a finding of good cause.
The present case is no different in principle than State v. Hines, 225 N.W.2d at 160-61 where we held that failure to call a jury panel was not good cause where the court had had time to properly schedule the trial within the time for speedy trial under the rule. In the present case, the court failed to reschedule a conflicting jury trial when it had adequate time to do so. No showing of good cause has been made to excuse the denial of defendant’s speedy trial rights. I would reverse the trial court’s order and remand the case to the district court with directions to dismiss the action.