Court Opinion

ID: 9548989
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:11:38.089727+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:42.408892
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
The facts of this case are not in dispute. Based upon controlling statutory authority and case precedent defendant’s conviction should be set aside and the charges against him dismissed.
The controlling statutory authority is I.C. § 19-3501, which states in pertinent part:
The court, unless good cause to the contrary is shown, must order the prosecution or indictment to be dismissed, in the following cases:
2. If a defendant, whose trial has not been postponed upon his application, is not brought to trial within six (6) months from the date that the indictment or information is filed with the court. (Emphasis added.)
The controlling precedent is State v. Hobson, 99 Idaho 200, 579 P.2d 697 (1978), wherein this Court held:
When a criminal defendant makes a prima facie showing that his right to a speedy trial is violated under I.C. § 19-3501, the district court must determine whether “good cause” for the delay is shown by the state under our statute. In such cases the burden is on the state to show “good cause” for the delay, just as the primary responsibility for bringing a case to trial is upon the state. Barker v. Wingo, supra 407 U.S. at 529, 92 S.Ct. 2182; United States v. MacDonald, 531 F.2d 196, 207 (4th Cir.1976); United States v. Macino, 486 F.2d 750, 753 (7th Cir.1973).
Id. at 202, 479 P.2d at 699.
In this case, defendant Russell was not brought to trial within I.C. § 19-3501’s mandated six-month time period. A total of nine and one-half months elapsed from October 12, 1982 — the date this Court refused the district court’s certification of defendant’s motion to dismiss — until the date the case was heard, July 25, 1983. None of this delay was caused by the defendant. Accordingly, defendant has made out a prima facie case that his statutory right to a speedy trial under § 19-3501 has been violated. Under § 19-3501, then, the only reason the district court should not dismiss defendant’s prosecution is where good cause for the delay can be shown. Clearly the state has abjectly failed that standard in this case.
The majority opinion attempts to distinguish Hobson by arguing that in Hobson the delay was caused by the prosecution while here the delay was solely caused by the district court. Such a distinction is without a difference and amounts to a rewriting of Hobson. Furthermore, it flies in the face of the reasons behind I.C. § 19-3501 and an individual’s constitutional right to a speedy trial.
The right to a speedy trial is designed to protect three interests: “(i) to prevent oppressive pretrial incarceration; (ii) to minimize anxiety and concern of the accused; and (iii) to limit the possibility that the defense will be impaired.” Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 532, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 2193, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972). These three reasons have been adopted by this Court in State v. Holtstander, 102 Idaho 306, 312, 629 P.2d 702, 708 (1981). None of these reasons are in any way logically related or dependent upon who causes the delay, provided only that it was not the defendant. It does not matter whether the prosecution, a court, or the Board of Corrections causes the delay; *64the effect is to deny the accused of his statutory and constitutional right to a speedy trial.
It is the ultimate in legal sophistry to declare that good cause is shown by the “state” for a trial delay totaling nine and one-half months when it is caused solely by a court of the state. Nothing in I.C. § 19-3501 suggests the legislature’s intent to limit the mandate of that section to prosecutors. Furthermore, Hobson, supra, rejected such a bald proposition.
In Hobson, Justice Shepard, the author of today’s opinion, was the lone dissenter. He based much of his dissent upon the 'argument that the delay in that case was in the most part caused by the courts. Hobson, supra, at 204, 579 P.2d at 701 (Shepard, J., dissenting). That argument persuaded no one then, and it is not persuasive today.
The majority’s blithe suggestion that a state court of Idaho is not part. of the “state” is astounding. The entire state court system has been established under Idaho’s constitution. At the risk of saying the obvious, but of which the majority seems oblivious, the judicial branch of government in Idaho is as much a part of the “state” as the executive and legislative branches are. Accordingly, constitutional and statutory mandates and rights which this Court requires the other branches of government to abide by ought to be followed by this Court, too. It has been forever recognized in this Republic that we have established a government of laws, not a government of men. The Judicial Department is a branch of that government, and the Supreme Court of that Judicial Department should be a court of law-giving, law-applying, and precedent-following judges — not a court of men cloaked in robes. Appropriately to this occasion is language, not my own, which the trial bench and bar may see as befitting:
The most intolerable evil, however, under which we have lived for the past twenty-five years, has been the changing and shifting character of our judicial decisions, by which we have been deprived of the inestimable benefit of judicial precedents as a safeguard to our rights of person and property.
Hobson, supra, may have been wrongly decided. If so, then those who comprise today’s majority of the Court, should overrule it. The trial bench and bar may well stand in bewilderment at the tacit overruling of the Hobson case, which received this Court’s extremely close consideration from oral argument on January 7, 1977, until our opinion was issued on June 1, 1978. Especially is this so where the legislature in 1980, full well knowing of the Hobson decision, amended I.C. § 19-3501 to provide as it now does. The legislative department passed this remedial legislation. The executive department, through the office of the Governor, approved it. It is the law — the law of the government of Idaho. Not only are the courts not above the law, there is little doubt that the law was to prod the judicial department into swifter action on filed criminal charges. The legislature has not been remiss in providing accused citizens of Idaho with statutory safeguards.1 In 1984 the legislature again amended § 19-3501 to provide that if defendants accused of misdemeanors were not brought to trial within six months after entering a not guilty plea, the court must order the prosecution dismissed. 1984 Idaho Sess. Laws 91.
Moreover, under our Idaho constitutional system of government, a factor apparently not in the minds of those who join the opinion of Justice Shepard, the prosecuting attorney is of the Judicial Department. ID. CONST., art. 5, § 18. State v. Wharfield, 41 Idaho 14, 236 P. 862 (1925). It is over-abundantly clear that the legislature’s prodding on behalf of accused citizens has been aimed at the judicial department as a *65whole, including the courts and the prosecuting attorneys. For this Court to purport to judicially exempt the Judicial Department from the mandates of I.C. § 19-3501 and the United States and Idaho Constitutions ranks as judicial activism at its worst.

. In 1967, and ensuing years, the legislature statutorily adopted many of the rights required by Miranda, and other enlightened decisions of the Warren court — many of which statutory provisions were more protective of the rights of accused citizens than the seeming dictates of the High Court. I.C. § 19-851, et seq.; I.C. § 19-1304.