Court Opinion

ID: 9779504
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 22:04:23.001528+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:27.283144
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, dissenting. I vigorously dissent from the majority opinion. First, I do not agree that the initial issue is whether an appeal was perfected from the municipal court to the circuit court. It is absolutely not necessary to make any determination on that particular issue. The sole issue in this case is whether the appellant’s right to a speedy trial was violated. Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 28.2(a) states that the time for trial commences running: from the date the charge is filed, except that if prior to that time the defendant has been continuously held in custody or on bail or lawfully at liberty to answer for the same offense or an offense based on the same conduct or arising from the same criminal eposide, then the time for trial shall commence running from the date of the arrest. [Emphasis added.] The majority opinion clearly shows that the appellant was arrested on November 20,1984. Eighteen months later the state was barred from trying him for the offense for which he was arrested, unless there was excludable time as set out in Rule 28.3. The trial court and the majority of this court simply created out of ether a three-day “excludable period” in order to extend the maximum time for trial up to the date for trial. Obviously, the defense attorney was on the horns of a dilemma in as much as he could not file his motion for dismissal under the speedy trial rule until the time had run. When the eighteen months expired he filed the motion to dismiss. The trial court then discovered a three-day “excludable period.” (The three-day exclusion was revealed by the trial court on August 21,1986, long after the time for a speedy trial had expired.) This court today affirms such action. This is clearly a judicial erosion of our own rules. The inevitable result of the majority opinion will likely be that there will no longer be any violations of the speedy trial rule. All the trial court now need do is find that he had held one of the motions under consideration for a period of thirty days and another for a similar time and on ad infinitum. The speedy trial rules were thoroughly considered before they were adopted. I see no reason to continue them in force if we are going to constantly erode them by completely ignoring the plain meaning of their words. But as Humpty Dumpty said: “The words mean what we say they mean.” Perhaps we should change the rules; until that time we should follow them.