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The Indiana Supreme Court granted the transfer of a case in the Sullivan Superior Court after the trial court failed to prove it needed to reschedule a trial due to court congestion, Justice Geoffrey Slaughter wrote.
The case involves defendant William Grimes, who was charged with theft, battery resulting in bodily injury, unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon and a habitual offender enhancement after hitting a man in the back of the head with a rifle and driving away with it, according to court documents.
Under Indiana Criminal Rule 4, a defendant has a constitutional right to a speedy trial, obliging the State to bring the defendant to trial within 70 days. The rule allows a court to delay the start of a trial due to congestion of the court’s calendar or for an emergency.
In this case, Grimes objected to the court’s order to delay the trial due to court congestion. When issuing the order to delay the trial, the judge in the case did not explain why the trial was being delayed beyond court congestion.
When a trial court delays a trial for congestion and the defendant objects, the supreme court applies a burden-shifting test, Slaughter explained.
The court first gives deference to the trial court’s finding but if the defendant presents a prima facie case that the congestion finding is inaccurate, it’s up to the trial court to respond with an explanation as to why the trial needs to be moved.
If the court fails to meet this burden, the defendant is entitled to have the claim against him dismissed or discharged under Rule 4.
Grimes filed a motion to discharge, obtaining copies of the court’s docket to show when the trial could’ve taken place, and the burden shifted to the court, who failed to provide further explanation.
“Grimes’s prima facie case returned the burden to the trial court to explain its congestion finding. Here, the court’s burden was a low bar to meet. But the court denied Grimes’s motion with no explanation. We afford this unexplained, bare-bones finding no deference at this juncture. Thus, the trial court failed to meet its burden,” said Slaughter.
The supreme court also turned down the State’s argument that the trial needed a special prosecutor (using the emergency exception caveat in Rule 4), and the trial had to be delayed because of it.
In denying the State’s argument, the supreme court explained that the State didn’t request a special prosecutor until after the trial court continued the trial.
The supreme court reversed the trial court’s judgment and remands with instructions to discharge Grimes.
Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Derek Molter concurred.
Justices Christopher Goff and Mark Massa dissented, with Goff writing a separate opinion.
In dissenting, Goff wrote that Grimes failed to meet his burden by submitting a copy of the court’s docket nine days after the court rescheduled the trial, instead of the day the court rescheduled it (which is the supreme court’s precedent).
The court’s precedent considers it “necessary to view the trial court’s calendar on the date that the court granted the trial continuance,” Truax v. State, 856 N.E.2d 116, 121 (Ind. Ct. App. 2006), Goff said.
“…given the frequency with which a trial court’s schedule changes, a docket dated several days after the continuance order is not, in my view, presumptively ‘sufficient to establish a given fact’—here, the state of the court’s calendar at the material time,” Goff said, quoting Johnson v. State, 283 N.E.2d 532, 534 (Ind. 1972).
The case is William R. Grimes v. State of Indiana, No. 24S-CR-217.
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