Court Opinion

ID: 9722082
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:16:36.154303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:30.566345
License: Public Domain

LEVINE, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I agree with the majority’s analysis, except for its conclusions that the defendants must show actual prejudice arising from their illegal incarceration and that they failed to establish that prejudice.
Because of the context of the cases we are considering, namely, that all defendants should have been released from detention because they met all the legal requirements established in the bail schedules, the “analogous” cases relied upon by the majority to require proof by the defendants of actual prejudice, are wholly inapposite. Those cases do not involve defendants who met all the requirements of bail but were, nonetheless, kept in jail. It is one thing to require of the defendant a showing of actual prejudice in a case where the procedural defect is mere delay. It is quite another to require it when the defect is not delay but a wholly illegal deprivation of liberty. If we are relying on analogy to require proof of actual prejudice by the defendant, then the analogy should be drawn from County of Riverside and accordingly, the City should bear the burdens of persuasion and production on the issue of actual prejudice just as it would in establishing the reasonableness of a delay of over forty-eight hours between a warrantless arrest and a judicial determination of probable cause. See County of Riverside v. MacLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44,-, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 1670, 114 L.Ed.2d 49, 63 (1991) [requiring government to show “a bona fide emergency or other extraordinary circumstances” when existence of probable cause is not determined within forty-eight hours of warrantless arrest]; see also State v. Abell, 383 N.W.2d 810, 812 (N.D.1986) [placing burden on prosecution to show that jury misconduct held no reasonable possibility of prejudice to defendant, “consistent with the basic premise that a defendant is entitled to a fair and impartial trial and with the prosecution’s burden to *747affirmatively prove every element of the crime charged”].
Given the obvious problems of proof facing these wrongly jailed defendants, clearly and carefully set forth by Judge Leclerc, it seems fair and reasonable to require nothing more from these defendants, incarcerated after they posted bail and should have been freed, than then* attorneys’ descriptions of then-potential defenses and to require the City to establish lack of active prejudice by proving that the defendants did not ask for independent tests and appeared to be falling-down drunk so that witnesses to then- respective appearance would have been of no assistance to their defense. Then, and only then, should the defendants be obliged to refute such evidence and place the issue of actual prejudice in dispute for resolution by the judge, with the City bearing the risk of non-persuasion. Here, the City produced no such evidence: That failure of production should be conclusive.
I would affirm.