Court Opinion

ID: 9690196
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:56:21.799597+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:54.019591
License: Public Domain

MILLER, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
The majority has taken a procedural rule and elevated it to a transactional immunity law with constitutional dimensions.
First, I suggest that the majority is rewriting SDCL 23A-44-5.1 (the 180-day rule).* Nowhere in that rule does it state, *591or even imply, that other crimes are affected. It refers specifically and exclusively to offenses “on the complaint or indictment” and requires that “the action” be dismissed for failure to comply with the rule.
In State v. Hoffman, 409 N.W.2d 373 (S.D.1987), this court (with this Justice dissenting on other grounds) held that the 180-day rule “stands on a different legal footing than constitutional claims and requires an analysis separate and distinct from constitutional claims.” Id. at 375.
Now, relying in major part on the ABA Standards of Criminal Justice and commentaries thereto, a speedy trial rule becomes a transactional immunity law. It is absurd to suggest that the ABA Standards (and especially the commentaries thereto!) are authority for anything! They are not even secondary authority! Rather, they are merely suggestions of a lawyer committee. Typically, these committees are assisted by a staff of inexperienced people who have little or no knowledge or background in the law. I understand that generally the commentaries are the product of the staff rather than the committee. To give such “suggestions” the same weight as judicial opinions (or even treatises by noted scholars) simply is an insult to our intelligence and the integrity of the opinion.
As Justice Henderson suggests in his special writing in State v. Tiedeman, 433 N.W.2d 237, 241 (S.D.1988), the 180-day rule does not prohibit other charges arising out of the same transaction to be brought where the 180-day rule has run as to other crimes in the same transaction. Courts in other states and in the federal system (including the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) have so held. Despite the so-called ABA standards, transactional immunity in speedy-trial rule cases has been rejected in State v. Moritz, 293 N.W.2d 235 (Iowa 1980); State v. Lucero, 108 N.M. 548, 775 P.2d 750 (App.1989), writ quashed 108 N.M. 582, 775 P.2d 1299 (1989); United States v. Savage, 863 F.2d 595 (8th Cir. 1988); United States v. Piontek, 861 F.2d 152 (7th Cir.1988). Even the case cited by the majority, Commonwealth v. Whiting, 509 Pa. 20, 500 A.2d 806 (1985), supports my position — it should be noted that it was decided four years after the Genovese case relied upon by the majority.
In my dissent in Hoffman, supra at 378, I stated:
I envision the day that some murderer, rapist, or child molester will be discharged under the 180-day rule because of some clerical error or bona fide, good cause oversight, leaving the People (who also have rights in our society) with no remedy in the courts.
The majority has now made my fear come true. More frightening is that the majority does so, not because of the language of the 180-day rule, but rather through an improper and improvident, sua sponte extension of the otherwise clear language of the rule.

 SDCL 23A-44-5.1 was significantly amended by our Court Rule 91-11 and the amendments take effect on July 1, 1991.