Court Opinion

ID: 9589792
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:48:44.182427+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:32.860916
License: Public Domain

*568Hill, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from Division 1 and from the judgment.
After he was found guilty by the jury, Hugh Don Smith was sentenced by the court on April 11,1972. After sentencing, Hugh Don Smith escaped from the custody of the sheriff. Smith remained on escape for 5 months, until he was captured in Florida by the FBI.
While Smith was on escape, his motion for new trial was dismissed as moot by reason of his escape.
This court has more cases than it can properly handle. In my view, this court should not be consuming time and exerting effort on behalf of escapees who by the act of escaping have thumbed their noses at the courts, law enforcement officers, and the public.
In my view, escapees waive the right to complain of errors at the trial. The United States Supreme Court has said: "This Court itself has long followed the practice of declining to review the conviction of escaped criminal defendants. . . Thus in Molinaro v. New Jersey, 396 U. S. 365 (1970), we dismissed the appeal of an escaped criminal defendant, stating that no persuasive reason exists to adjudicate the merits of such a case and that an escape 'disentitles the defendant to call upon the resources of the Court for determination of his claims.’... In Allen v. Georgia, 166 U. S. 138 (1897), we upheld as against a constitutional due process attack a state court’s dismissal of the appeal of an escaped prisoner and its refusal to reinstate the appeal upon his later recapture.” Estelle v. Dorrough, 420 U. S. 534 (95 SC 1173, 43 LE2d 377) (1974).
In Allen v. Georgia, supra, the Supreme Court quoted approvingly from Commonwealth v. Andrews, 97 Mass. 543, as follows: "So far as the defendant had any right to be heard under the Constitution, he must be deemed to have waived it by escaping from custody, and the failing to appear and prosecute his exceptions in person, according to the order of court under which he was committed.”
In my view, so far as the defendant Hugh Don Smith had any right to be heard under the Constitution, he must be deemed to have waived it by escaping from custody.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Nichols *569joins in this dissent.