52 N.Y.2d 37 | NY | 1980
Lead Opinion
The question on these appeals is whether the prosecutor’s statutory obligation to be ready for trial within six months after commencing a felony action against the accused (CPL 30.30, subd 1, par [a]) should be postponed when the felony complaint, the initial accusatory instrument, is dismissed because of the prosecutor’s inexcusable failure to prosecute.
In People v Haynes, the defendant was arrested on June 11,1977 and, the following day, was arraigned on a felony complaint. A felony hearing originally scheduled for June 27 was, at the People’s request, adjourned first to July 14 and then again to August 3. When the prosecutor was still unable to proceed with the hearing on that latter date, the court dismissed the felony complaint. However, on November 4, 1977 the defendant was indicted for the same offenses originally charged in the felony complaint. The defendant subsequently moved to dismiss the indictment pursuant to CPL 30.30 (subd 1, par [a]). At that point more than six months had elapsed since the filing of the original felony complaint.
In People v Osgood the defendant, arrested on June 1, 1977, was arraigned on a felony complaint the following day. At the People’s request the felony hearing scheduled for June 22 was successively adjourned to August 12, September 7, and September 26. On the latter date the court granted the People an additional adjournment of 30 days, noting that the case was being marked “final” against them. Nevertheless on October 26, the People were still unable to proceed with the hearing and the court dismissed the felony complaint. On December 23, 1977, the defendant was indicted for the same offenses. She was arraigned on February 21, 1978 and the case was adjourned to April 4 at which time she moved to dismiss relying on CPL 30.30 (subd 1, par [a]).
In each case the trial court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss the indictment. Computing the statutory period from the filing of the felony complaint, the courts found that the People had not met their obligation of being ready for trial within six months of the commencement of
At the heart of our difference with the dissenters is their apparent unwillingness to accept two pertinent facts. The first is that, while speedy trial principles unquestionably prompted the enactment of GPL 30.30, the Legislature, in supplanting the speedy trial rule promulgated by the Administrative Board of the Judicial Conference with its proposed specified time schedules, elected to rely for assurance of basic speedy trial rights on the enforcement of constitutional standards (CPL 30.20) and in addition accorded defendants the new statutory right to a dismissal if the People are not ready for trial within specified time limits (People v Brothers, 50 NY2d 413, 416-418). Thus, cited considerations with respect to the impact of dismissals on speedy trial rights while relevant, surely are not determinative with respect to the application of the ready trial statute. The second fact is that the ready trial statute, which establishes an elaborate and detailed scheme for computing the statutory period, makes allowance for exceptional circumstances and expressly provides for exclusion of certain periods (subd 4) or recommencement of the statutory period (subd 5) when a delay has been caused by the defendant, or is due to circumstances beyond the prosecutor’s control. However, the statute does not provide any dispensation, by way of exclusion or recommencement of the statutory period, when, as in the cases now before us, the felony complaint initiating a criminal action against the defendant is dismissed because of the prosecutor’s inexcusable delay.
It would, of course, be inconsistent, if not perverse, for the Legislature to provide that a statute, designed to insure
Nevertheless the District Attorney urges that the statutory period recommenced when the indictment was returned, because it marked the commencement of a second criminal action. Although that result would be inconsistent with the purpose of the six-month ready rule prescribed in CPL 30.30,
The District Attorney contends that this statement is overly broad. He notes that in Lomax the trial court had dismissed an indictment and had specifically granted the People permission to resubmit the charge to the Grand Jury, which by statute is “deemed to constitute an order holding the defendant for the action of a grand jury with respect to such charge” (CPL 210.45, subd 9). He claims, however, that when, as here, the defendant has not been held or deemed to be held for further proceedings after dismissal of the prior accusatory instrument, there can indeed be more than one criminal action for any set of criminal charges. This exception is said to be compelled by the fact that the Legislature in defining a criminal action (CPL 1.20, subd 16), stated that it includes “all further accusatory instruments directly derived from the initial one” (emphasis added) and also provided, according to the District Attorney, that it terminates with the final disposition of an accusatory instrument.
Furthermore the statute defining a criminal action is more inclusive than the prosecutor’s analysis would seem to suggest. It goes on to provide that the criminal action also includes “all proceedings, orders and motions conducted or made by a criminal court in the course of disposing of any such accusatory instrument, or which, regardless of the court in which they occurred or were made, could properly be considered as a part of the record of the case by an appellate court upon an appeal from a judgment of conviction” (CPL 1.20, subd 16, par [b]). Here, of course, the felony complaint and the order dismissing it are part of the-record on appeal from the order dismissing the indictment. Since it would also be a part of the record if the defendant had been convicted following a denial of the motion to dismiss the indictment, it cannot be said that the complaint and the indictment are not part of the same criminal action.
Finally and most importantly, there is no support for the contention that the criminal action initiated by the filing of the felony complaint was completely terminated when the complaint was dismissed. The statute does not provide that a criminal action terminates with the final disposition of any accusatory instrument. Actually the statute states that the criminal action “terminates with the imposition of sentence or some other final disposition in a criminal court of
In sum, the six-month ready rule was meant to eliminate unjustified delays and was not intended to provide rewards or incentive for delay. The prosecutor’s argument that the return of the indictment, after dismissal of the felony complaint for inexcusable delay in prosecution, commenced a new criminal action and renewed the six-month period, is inconsistent with that purpose and is not commanded by anything the Legislature has said.
Accordingly, the orders of the Appellate Division should be reversed and the cases remitted to the Appellate Division for review of the facts, if any.
. The dissenter’s suggestion that the Legislature may have intended a “gap” in the prosecution in order to allow the People additional time to investigate when they discover a weakness in their case after having commenced the action, ignores the fact that CPL 30.30 (subd 4, par [g]) expressly authorizes a continuance for “exceptional circumstances, including but not limited to” loss of material evidence or the need for “additional time to prepare the people’s case”.
. Acceptance of the District Attorney’s position would undoubtedly produce confusion, mischief or anomalies in other areas.
For instance, the defendant’s right to counsel which attaches upon the filing of a felony complaint, thus precluding the police from questioning the defendant by acquiring a waiver of counsel in the absence of counsel (People v Samuels, 49 NY2d 218) would now arguably disattach once the felony complaint is dismissed or withdrawn by the police, thus permitting the defendant to be manipulated into his waiver of counsel where he is once again vulnerable to uncounseled questioning.
Any determination made in a suppression hearing prior to dismissal of a complaint (CPL 710.50, subd 1, par [b]) would apparently have no effect on the trial of the indictment which would be considered an entirely different criminal action.
In nonfelony cases the District Attorney’s argument would seem to completely undermine the readiness rule. In those cases, a dismissal of the accusatory instrument for failure to be ready for trial within the statutory period would not preclude the People from filing another accusatory instrument (compare CPL 170.30, with CPL 210.20, subd 4, prohibiting the People from obtaining another indictment when the prior indictment was dismissed for failure to comply with the readiness rule; see, also, CPL 210.20, subd 1, par [g]; CPL 30.30, subd 1). Under the prosecutor’s theory, the filing of the new accusatory instrument would commence a new criminal action renewing the statutory period, and allowing additional “renewals”, apparently without limit unless, as the dissent vaguely suggests, there is a showing of “bad faith” in addition to neglect. Thus in these cases there would be no fixed time limit and the readiness rule would simply be converted into a bad faith rule. It is no answer to say that the speedy trial provisions in other statutes and the Constitution will ultimately fix an outside limit. If the Legislature had found those provisions to be an adequate response to the problem of pretrial delay in the criminal courts, it would not have enacted CPL 30.30.
Dissenting Opinion
(dissenting). This appeal illustrates the frailty of the English language and contrast in judicial philosophies. To bring the problem it presents more clearly into focus, it is important to note that we deal not with the constitutional due process right to a speedy trial, but with what the Legislature meant to require when it enacted CPL 30.30. The majority concludes that the section must be interpreted to require dismissal of a felony indictment and consequent bar to further prosecution of its charge or charges (CPL 210.20, subd 4), without trial, without any indication of prejudice to the defendant, and without any suggestion of unconscionable or improper conduct on the part of the People, in every situation in which a felony complaint is dismissed without defendant being held for the Grand Jury and the subsequently returned Grand Jury indictment is not brought to trial within six months from the date of filing of the felony complaint. In my view so to interpret the section constitutes not interpretation but judicial legislation. I, therefore, respectfully dissent.
Because we construe statutes “in a judicial role and do not function as legislators” (Allen v Cloutier Constr. Corp., 44 NY2d 290, 300-301), they are generally to be read as written even if the consequences seem unwise or undesirable to the courts (People v Kupprat, 6 NY2d 88, 90; McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 1, Statutes, § 73). Interpretation encompasses not only the words but also the spirit or purposes of an enactment, but when a court deals with an enactment which is “a fully integrated and comprehensive scheme of regulation,” such as the Criminal Procedure Law, it “cannot and should not weigh policy considerations or use creative interpretation in the application of the statutory command” (Tate, The Law-Making Function of the Judge, 28 La L Rev 211,218). Viewed against the back
Of prime importance among those reasons is the background against which the section was enacted. As the United States Supreme Court had recognized in 1905 in Beavers v Haubert (198 US 77, 87), the constitutional right to a speedy trial secures rights to the defendant but does not preclude the rights of public justice and, furthermore, is necessarily relative. In an effort to quantify and simplify the respective rights a number of States had, by the time CPL 30.30 was proposed for adoption, enacted laws or adopted procedural rules which defined the respective rights more narrowly than does the Constitution, essentially by fixing an outside time limit and stating what delays were to be excused (for good cause) in computing that time (American Bar Association, Standards Relating to Speedy Trial [Approved Draft, 1968], pp 14-16).
New York’s CPL, enacted in 1970, did not do so. Rather it simply carried over the declaration of section 8 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (see, also, Civil Rights Law, § 12) that “the defendant is entitled to a speedy trial,” thus simply repeating the language of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Prior to the effective date of the CPL, howéver, the Administrative Board of the Judicial Conference promulgated a series of rules intended to provide á time-period definition of the right to speedy trial, which specified the time within which a criminal action had to be brought to trial (Denzer, Practice Commentary, McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 11A, CPL 30.30, 1980-1981 Supp, pp 63-65). With the obvious purpose of balancing the interests of the State in prosecuting criminal offenses with those of persons accused not to be subjected indefinitely to the obloquy and other detriments of public accusation, the Legislature enacted CPL 30.30 which requires only that the People be ready for trial within a specified time after a criminal action is begun, rather than that the case be brought to trial within that time. Furthermore,
Relevant also to an understanding of CPL 30.30 is the work of the American Bar Association’s Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice, the Advisory Committee on Criminal Trial of which had recommended Standards Relating to Speedy Trial which were approved by the ABA House of Delegates in February, 1968. The significance of those standards is twofold. First, the prestigious committee of Federal and State Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and professors who drafted the standards saw fit to distinguish, with respect to dismissal followed by a later charge for the same offense, between dismissal at the instance of the prosecutor, which under subdivision (f) of section 2.3 simply tolls running of the time period, and dismissal on defendant’s motion, which under subdivision (b) of section 2.2 started the time running anew. The committee quoted from People v Hamby (27 Ill 2d 493, 496) the reason for the difference in treatment: “ ‘Were it otherwise the People would be obliged to either successfully defend all such motions or incur the risk of the accused being discharged under the statute. Such perfection cannot be demanded, even of the people, nor should such a weapon to permit potential abuse be placed in the hands of an accused’ ” and added in its comment: “Of course, if the defendant successfully moves for dismissal on the ground that the time for trial has already run, this is an absolute bar (see § 4.1). More difficult is the question of what the result should be when the time for trial has already run and the defendant fails to raise this issue but instead obtains a dismissal on some other ground which in itself does not bar a new charge. Although effective arguments can be made either way, on balance it seems preferable to start the time running again from the subsequent arrest or charge.” As to
If we turn from the background of CPL 30.30 to analysis of its wording in relation to the CPL, resolution of the appeals before us turns on when within the meaning of CPL 30.30 (subd 1, par [a]) the criminal actions of which dismissal was sought commenced. When a criminal action is commenced is defined in both CPL 100.05 and CPL 1.20 (subd 17). CPL 100.05 provides that: “A criminal action is commenced by the filing of an accusatory instrument with a criminal court, and if more than one such instrument is filed in the course of the same criminal action, such action commences when the first of such instruments is filed. The only way in which a criminal action can be commenced in a superior court is by the filing therewith by a grand jury of an indictment against a defendant who has never been held by a local criminal court for the action of such grand jury with respect to any charge contained in such indictment. Otherwise, a criminal action can be commenced only in a local criminal court” (emphasis supplied). Since both a felony complaint and an indictment are within the definition of “accusatory instrument” (CPL 1.20, subd 1), the crucial question for the present cases is whether the subsequent accusatory instrument (the indictment) was filed “in the course of the same criminal action,” within the meaning of the first sentence of CPL 100.05, that is to say, whether the indictment obtained after dismissal of the felony complaint without the holding of defendant for Grand Jury action began a new criminal action or is but the continua
The same result follows if we look at CPL 1.20 (subds 16, 17). The latter defines “Commencement of criminal action” in words almost identical with the first sentence of CPL 100.05; the former defines “Criminal action” as follows: “A criminal action (a) commences with the filing of an accusatory instrument against a defendant in a criminal court, as specified in subdivision seventeen; (b) includes the filing of all further accusatory instruments directly derived from the initial one, and all proceedings, orders and motions conducted or made by a criminal court in the course of disposing of any such accusatory instrument, or which, regardless of the court in which they occurred or were made, could properly be considered as a part of the record of the case by an appellate court upon an appeal from a judgment of conviction; and (c) terminates with the imposition of sentence or some other final disposition in a criminal court of the last accusatory instrument filed in the case” (Emphasis added.)
Can it be said that the indictments in the two cases before us were “directly derived” within the meaning of paragraph (b) from the felony complaint? In each case, of course, the complaint and the indictment derived from the same facts, but in neither did the indictment derive “di
The language of paragraph (c) of subdivision 16 bears out that view. According to it a criminal action terminates with “final disposition” of an accusatory instrument. While “final disposition” is not a term defined by the CPL, we have already seen that CPL 180.70 (subd 4) requires that absent reasonable cause to believe defendant committed any offense, the court “must dismiss the felony complaint and discharge the defendant from custody * * * 0r * * * exonerate the bail.” To those clear indicia of final disposition may be added CPL 160.50 which requires that upon termination of a criminal action in favor of the person accused all official records and papers be sealed and that photographs, fingerprints and the like be returned, and which provides in para
Against these multiple indicia of legislative intent that dismissal of a felony complaint without holding defendant for the Grand Jury terminates, and therefore is a final disposition of, the action begun by the filing of the felony complaint, the majority stresses the use in paragraph (c) of the words “last accusatory instrument filed in the case.” Simply stated, that is a bootstrap argument. There can be more than one accusatory instrument in a case, but for the reasons already stated at length there is a new case when a criminal action is begun by superior court indictment against a defendant who was not held for Grand Jury action when the felony complaint against him was dismissed by the local criminal court. By assuming that the two accusatory instruments are filed in the same case the majority begs the question.
Defendant argues further, and the majority appears to indorse the contention, that for purposes of the speedy trial policy enacted by CPL 30.30 the indictment cannot be regarded as beginning a separate action because a part of that policy, set forth in paragraphs (c) and (d) of subdivi
With respect, I find the “anomalies” referred to in footnote 2 of the majority opinion nonexistent. The supposition that manipulation of defendant’s right to counsel will result from a holding that dismissal of a felony complaint terminates the action is answered by our decision in People v Skinner (52 NY2d 24 [decided herewith]), which holds that neither the absence of formal commencement of the criminal action nor the fact that defendant is not in cus
To hold the charges involved in the present appeals not dismissible does not leave the defendants without protection against undue delay, for there remains the due process protection which we have not infrequently enforced (e.g., People v Singer, 44 NY2d 241; People v Staley, 41 NY2d 789; People v Taranovich, 37 NY2d 442). The only issue before us is whether the Legislature by enacting CPL 30.30 intended to require dismissal without trial'and without any demonstration of prejudice in the unique situation of these cases. The majority bases the conclusion that it did on a legislative purpose more procrustean than I believe can be found in the statute, bearing in mind its background and the language it uses. No express provision of the statute requires the result reached, and the purpose behind its enactment has not been so clearly articulated in relation to the situation of the present cases as to warrant our predicating dismissal upon the spirit or purpose of the statute alone. At most there exists a gap which should be filled by the Legislature, not by this court.
In each case, the order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed.
Judges Gabrielli, Jones and Fuchsberg concur with Judge Wachtler; Judge Meyer dissents and votes to affirm
In each case: Order reversed and case remitted to the Appellate Division, Second Department, for further proceedings in accordance with the opinion herein.
. CPL 1.20 (subd 17), which is essentially the same as the first sentence of CPL 100.05, uses the words “in the course of the action.” Omission of the words “same criminal” before “action” is not regarded as significant.
. In pertinent part the subdivision reads: “5. For purposes of this section, * ** * (c) where a criminal action is commenced by the filing of a felony complaint, and thereafter, in the course of the same criminal action either the felony complaint is replaced with or converted to an information, prosecutor’s information or misdemeanor complaint pursuant to article 180 or a prosecutor’s information is filed pursuant to section 190.70, the period applicable for the purposes of subdivision one must be the period applicable to the charges in the new accusatory instrument, calculated from the date of the filing of such new accusatory instrument; provided, however, that when the aggregate of such period and the period of time, excluding the periods provided in subdivision four, already elapsed from the date of the filing of the felony complaint to the date of the filing of the new accusatory instrument exceeds six months, the period applicable to the charges in the felony complaint must remain applicable and continue as if the new accusatory instrument had not been filed; (d) where a criminal action is commenced by the filing of a felony complaint, and thereafter, in the course of the same criminal action either the felony complaint is replaced with or converted to an information, prosecutor’s information or misdemeanor complaint pursuant to article 180 or a prosecutor’s information is filed pursuant to section 190.70, the period applicable for the purposes of subdivision two must be the period applicable to the charges in the new accusatory instrument, calculated from the date of the filing of such new accusatory instrument; provided, however, that when the aggregate of such period and the period of time, excluding the periods provided in subdivision four, already elapsed from the date of the filing of the felony complaint to the date of the filing of the new accusatory instrument exceeds ninety days, the period applicable to the charges in the felony complaint must remain applicable and continue as if the new accusatory instrument had not been filed.”