Court Opinion

ID: 9579003
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:50:28.847025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:34:08.862891
License: Public Domain

Shearing, J.,
with whom Maupin, J., joins,
dissenting:
I believe that the district court’s decision not to permit the state to amend the information constituted an abuse of discretion. The district court stated that its reason for this decision was that such amendment would prejudice respondents, who had already filed petitions for writs of habeas corpus based on the original indictment. The district court stated that if the state had sought to cure the indictment’s deficiencies before the hearing on respondents’ petitions for writ, respondents would not have been prejudiced. In fact, a timely amendment would have rendered respondents’ petitions moot, and conserved time and judicial resources.
Respondents also complain that the proposed amended indictment contains more counts than the original indictment. In their petitions for writ, however, respondents assigned error to the fact that each count in their indictment contained more than one *169charge. The state sought to remedy this problem by ensuring that each count contained only one charge. Consequently, the amended indictment necessarily contained more counts than the original indictment. Respondents maintain that such amendment unfairly prejudiced them. I do not agree that respondents should be able to succeed in asserting these inconsistent positions. No new charges were added to the proposed amended indictment. Rather, some of the original charges were separated into separate counts; other charges were eliminated.
Although the original indictment was defective in form, the allegations it contained were sufficient to place respondents on notice of the charges against them. The proposed amended indictment contained no additional or different offenses and would not have prejudiced the substantial rights of the respondents. NRS 173.095(1). Therefore, the district court should have granted the state’s motion to file the amended indictment.