Court Opinion

ID: 9557935
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:00:42.437708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:45.355981
License: Public Domain

Rosellini, J.
(dissenting)—I must reiterate the position which I took in State v. Elizondo, 85 Wn.2d 935, 540 P.2d 1370 (1975), in which Justices Stafford, Hamilton, and Utter joined me in dissenting. CrR 3.3 provides that a criminal charge shall be brought to trial within 90 days following the preliminary appearance. This rule is not conditioned upon the defendant’s being “held to answer” in the interim. A preliminary appearance must be held before the close of business of the next judicial day following the day of arrest. JCrR 2.03.
The appellant here was charged with a crime 4 months after her preliminary appearance. She timely moved to dismiss the charge with prejudice. The trial took place nearly 6 months after the date of the preliminary appearance. Under the rules laid down by this court to provide for speedy trials, her motion should have been granted.
The majority assumes that the comments to the ABA Standards Relating to Speedy Trial have been incorporated in our rules. If so, it has been done sub silentio, and I do not believe that either lawyers or laymen should be expected to read into the rules qualifications or modifications which this court did not see fit to promulgate.
*144After all, we wrote the rules. We put there what we felt should be included, and presumably we omitted what we felt should be omitted. In requiring that criminal defendants be brought to trial within 90 days from the date of the preliminary appearance, we did not make any exceptions to the rule other than those which are set forth in the rule. CrR 3.3(d). Certain periods are expressly excluded. Espressio unius est exclusio alterius. Continuances can be obtained, but they must be sought in the superior court, and the grounds for such continuances are set forth in the rule. CrR 3.3 (e).
Significantly, the majority opinion makes no reference to the rule governing pretrial release. This is CrR 3.2. It provides for revocation of a pretrial release on personal recognizance, but it does not provide for exoneration of the release prior to trial or dismissal. This may well be the reason why the trial court did not provide for exoneration of the conditions of the release. Whatever the reason, the court did not include such a provision in its order, and it would seem to me that it is inviting defiance of court orders to suggest that the appellant was entitled to disregard the conditions of her release when a complaint was not filed by April 30,1975.
Just as judges are supposed to give words in rules and statutes their ordinary meaning, the layman subject to the orders of the court should be entitled to assume that words used in an order carry their ordinary meaning. If the appellant or her attorney thought that the order was intended to provide for her exoneration from the conditions of the release after April 30, 1975, if no complaint was filed, the court should have been asked to clarify the order; but I think it would have been risky indeed to presume that the appellant could safely flee the country with no fear of arrest.
In any event I do not think that our rule can be construed to require a speedy trial only where the accused is held in custody or released on recognizance or bond. After all, this court wrote the rules. If it thinks they are made*145quate or inappropriate, it should rewrite them. But it ought not to read into them provisions which are not there and read out of them the words that are written. They are complicated enough as they are. To further obscure them is to bring into focus the question whether the court itself, in its rule making operations, is not bordering on the denial of due process of law.
I would order the charge dismissed.
Utter and Horowitz, JJ., concur with Rosellini, J.