Court Opinion

ID: 9713558
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:17:28.407538+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:19.271314
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE GREEN, specially concurring: I agree that the conviction and sentence should be reversed and the case remanded. The majority correctly states the citation to have been abandoned and the defendant charged for the first time by a document stating a crime upon filing of the information. The dictum of Clarke indicates that he had a right to plead anew to the information. By the same logic he had a new right to a jury trial as to the crime charged by the information. I do not deem the jury waiver to the abandoned charge to stand to the new charge even though the citation referred to the same offense as the information. Orderly procedure requires otherwise. I disagree with the Smith analysis that if a defendant waives jury trial hoping a charge is defective so that he can go to trial assured of either an acquittal or a conviction subject to reversal, the trial court abuses its discretion by denying a withdrawal of the waiver if the defect is corrected. Here, defendant asserts neither a lack of understanding as to the consequences of jury waiver nor of the nature of the offense for which he was to be tried. He had no right to rely upon the charge remaining defective and had no right to withdraw a jury waiver merely because his hoped-for strategy was thwarted. If the jury waiver had stood to the information as well as the citation, the trial court would not have abused its discretion in denying withdrawal.