Lead Opinion
Marcin Waldemar Sosniak appeals the trial court’s denial of his motion to dismiss his indictment due to an alleged constitutional speedy trial violation. Because we find that Callaway v. State,
1. The record shows that Sosniak was arrested on March 20,2006 for murder,*
2. OCGA § 5-6-34 (a) (1) authorizes direct appeals only from “final judgments [of the trial court], that is to say, where the case is no longer pending in the court below.”
Sosniak’s direct appeal rests instead on application of the so-called “collateral order” doctrine. This doctrine was originally developed by the United States Supreme Court as an interpretation of28USC§ 1291, the federal statute that, much like OCGA § 5-6-34 (a) (1), authorizes direct appeals in federal cases only “from all final decisions of the district courts.” See also 28 USC § 1292 (authorizing appeals from specified interlocutory orders in subsection (a), like OCGA § 5-6-34 (a) (2)-(12), and authorizing other interlocutory appeals at the discretion of both the trial and appellate courts, like OCGA § 5-6-34 (b)).
In 1977, in Abney v. United States,
The Court first recognized that, “[i]n sharp distinction to a denial of a motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds, a denial of a motion to dismiss on speedy trial grounds does not represent ‘a complete, formal and, in the trial court, a final rejection’ of the defendant’s claim.” Id. at 858 (quoting Abney,
Before trial, of course, an estimate of the degree to which delay has impaired an adequate defense tends to be speculative. The denial of a pretrial motion to dismiss an indictment on speedy trial grounds does not indicate that a like motion made after trial — when prejudice can be better gauged — would also be denied. Hence, pretrial denial of a speedy trial claim can never be considered a complete, formal, and final rejection by the trial court of the defendant’s contention; rather, the question at stake in the motion to dismiss necessarily “remains open, unfinished [and] inconclusive” until the trial court has pronounced judgment.
MacDonald,
With respect to “the requirement that the order sought to be appealed be ‘collateral to, and separable from, the principal issue at the accused’s impending criminal trial, i.e., whether or not the accused is guilty of the offense charged,’ ” MacDonald,
Even if the degree of prejudice could be accurately measured before trial, a speedy trial claim nonetheless would not be sufficiently independent of the outcome of the trial to warrant pretrial appellate review. The claim would be largely satisfied by an acquittal resulting from the prosecution’s failure to carry its burden of proof.
Id. Unlike a double jeopardy violation, the harm of which is not eliminated by the defendant’s acquittal after being twice put in jeopardy, “[t]he essence” of a speedy trial claim “in the usual case is that the passage of time has frustrated his ability to establish his innocence of the crime charged. Normally, it is only after trial that that claim may fairly be assessed.” Id. at 860.
Most importantly, the Supreme Court flatly rejected the argument that the right to a speedy trial is, like the right against double jeopardy or to reduced bail before trial, the sort of right “the legal and
There perhaps is some superficial attraction in the argument that the right to a speedy trial ■ — • by analogy to these other rights — must be vindicated before trial in order to insure that no nonspeedy trial is ever held. Both doctrinally and pragmatically, however, this argument fails. Unlike the protection afforded by the Double Jeopardy Clause, the Speedy Trial Clause does not, either on its face or according to the decisions of this Court, encompass a “right not to be tried” which must be upheld prior to trial if it is to be enjoyed at all. It is the delay before trial, not the trial itself, that offends against the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial. If the factors outlined in Barker v. Wingo, supra, combine to deprive an accused of his right to a speedy trial, that loss, by definition, occurs before trial. Proceeding with the trial does not cause or compound the deprivation already suffered.
MacDonald,
Finally, the Court concluded that allowing direct appeals from pretrial denials of speedy trial motions would actually undermine the values reflected in the Speedy Trial Clause. “Many defendants, of course, would be willing to tolerate the delay in a trial that is attendant upon a pretrial appeal in the hope of winning that appeal.” MacDonald,
Among other things, delay may prejudice the prosecution’s ability to prove its case, increase the cost to society of maintaining those defendants subject to pretrial detention, and prolong the period during which defendants released on bail may commit other crimes.
Id. Thus, “[allowing an exception to the rule against pretrial appeals in criminal cases for speedy trial claims would threaten precisely the
Therefore, persuasive precedent from the United States Supreme Court clearly indicates that rulings denying a pre-trial motion for speedy trial should be subject to interlocutory appeals procedures rather than being directly appealable.
Nonetheless, this Court strayed from this precedent, and, in Callaway and Boseman, we extended the collateral order doctrine as developed in Abney, and applied to statutory speedy trial claims in Hubbard v. State,
Today, in line with the United States Supreme Court precedent in MacDonald and our Court of Appeals’ admonitions, we hereby overrule our decisions in Callaway and in Boseman. Both cases wrongly determined that a defendant has the right to bring a direct appeal from a denial of a pre-trial motion for a constitutional speedy trial. Defendants must follow the interlocutory appeal procedures of OCGA § 5-6-34 (b) when pursuing appellate review in these cases.
3. We recognize that, given the clear, though incorrect, mandate of our overruled case law, Sosniak may be caught somewhat by surprise with this opinion. To ameliorate this surprise, we note that, under our prior precedent, Sosniak’s speedy trial claim was properly denied by the trial court in any event.
Alleged violations of the constitutional right to a speedy trial must be analyzed under the aegis of Barker v. Wingo, supra. “First, the court must determine whether the interval from the accused’s
Length of the delay. Because there has not been a trial, the length of the delay must be calculated from the date of arrest or formal accusation to the date on which the motion to dismiss on speedy trial grounds was decided. State v. Porter,
Reasons for the delay. Whether the defendant or the State bears the primary responsibility for delay in reaching trial is “pivotal in evaluating the strength of a constitutional speedy trial claim, as it can color the consideration of all other factors.” Ruffin, supra,
The trial court’s order shows that it carefully considered the reasons for the delay, dividing the time between indictment and trial into a number of distinct periods. The trial court first found that the pre-indictment delay of eighteen months was caused by the State, was not purposeful delay, and would not weigh heavily against the State. The trial court next considered the period of time from Sos-niak’s arraignment in January through December of 2008, and weighed the time slightly against Sosniak, based on certain continuances he requested. The trial court weighed the time the case was under appellate review as neutral. The remittitur from the interim review was returned on June 24,2010, and the following day, the trial court scheduled trial for January 10, 2011. On December 10, 2010, Sosniak’s counsel requested a two-year continuance, contending that
The trial court did not abuse its discretion in any of these findings, and Sosniak’s contentions that the delay should not be held against him because he lacked appropriate funding does not alter this result. The record supports the trial court’s finding that Sosniak’s counsel did not properly pursue funding for their client. Testimony clearly showed that, other than one invoice from February 2009 for an expert witness, Sosniak made no requests for payment for legal fees or otherwise.
Defendant’s assertion of the right. “The relevant question for purposes of the third [speedy trial] factor is whether the accused has asserted the right to a speedy trial ‘in due course.’ ” (Punctuation and footnote omitted.) Ruffin, supra,
Prejudice. To determine whether the defendant has been prejudiced by the delay, one must consider whether there has been
Appeal dismissed.
Notes
Sosniak has remained incarcerated since his arrest.
OCGA § 5-6-34 (a) provides in full:
Appeals may be taken to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals from the following judgments and rulings of the superior courts, the constitutional city courts, and such other courts or tribunals from which appeals are authorized by the Constitution and laws of this state:
(1) All final judgments, that is to say, where the case is no longer pending in the court below, except as provided in Code Section 5-6-35 [requiring an application to appeal certain types of issues and cases];
(2) All judgments involving applications for discharge in bail trover and contempt cases;
(3) All judgments or orders directing that an accounting be had;
(4) All judgments or orders granting or refusing applications for receivers or for interlocutory or final injunctions;
(5) All judgments or orders granting or refusing applications for attachment against fraudulent debtors;
(6) Any ruling on a motion which would be dispositive if granted with respect to a defense that the action is barred by Code Section 16-11-173;
(7) All judgments or orders granting or refusing to grant mandamus or any other extraordinary remedy, except with respect to temporary restraining orders;
(8) All judgments or orders refusing applications for dissolution of corporations created by the superior courts;
(9) All judgments or orders sustaining motions to dismiss a caveat to the probate of a will;
(10) All judgments or orders entered pursuant to subsection (c) of Code Section 17-10-6.2;
(11) All judgments or orders in child custody cases including, but not limited to, awarding or refusing to change child custody or holding or declining to hold persons in contempt of such child custody judgment or orders; and
(12) All judgments or orders entered pursuant to Code Section 35-3-37.
On August 26,2010, by administrative order, the trial court had transferred $50,000 from a trust account established for co-defendant Ortegon with money received from Georgia Public Defender Standards Council to an account for Sosniak.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring.
Appellant Marcin Sosniak is facing the death penalty for his alleged role in the murder of four people in Forsyth County on March 19, 2006. Although he was arrested the next day, Sosniak has been in no hurry to be tried, perhaps because this Court has affirmed, on interim review, the trial court’s rulings that his admissions to the police, including telling them where the murder weapon was discarded, will be admissible at trial. See Sosniak v. State,
Only after the trial court denied yet another continuance in October 2011 did Sosniak assert, for the very first time, that the State had violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial. He did so on the Friday before the thrice-delayed trial was scheduled to begin, five- and-a-half years after his arrest, and having never filed a statutory demand for a speedy trial. The trial court held a hearing and denied the speedy trial motion within three weeks, but the trial could not
Today this Court overrules Boseman and Callaway and aligns Georgia law with the persuasive reasoning of the United States Supreme Court on the same issue in United States v. MacDonald,
The Court of Appeals’ opinions in Callaway prior to our granting certiorari and on remand from our decision accurately trace this Court’s unfortunate journey from following the United States Supreme Court’s Abney decision and applying the collateral order doctrine to constitutional double jeopardy claims, see Patterson v. State, 248 Ga.
In its opinion on remand, the Court of Appeals recognized that defendants would use our holding in Callaway to delay their trials:
[A]n OCGA § 17-7-170 speedy trial claim . . . contains procedural safeguards which preclude the use of that statute solely for purposes of abusive delay____None of these specific procedural safeguards exist with regard to the constitutional right to a speedy trial. Moreover, it has been recognized that “delay” is a very real defense strategy. Amotion to dismiss based solely on constitutional speedy trial grounds can be filed immediately prior to trial; without notice; without any indication that speedy trial concerns were ever at issue; and completely without merit. “When interposed for purposes of delay, the denial of such motion will accomplish its goal if direct appeal is available as a matter of right.”
Callaway,
And, so, we see firsthand the “persuasive rationale for . . . creating a distinction between constitutional and statutory speedy trial rulings” when it comes to direct appeal. ... As this case demonstrates, such pretrial delay is all too possible under the current state of the law in Georgia, even though, “Delay often works to a defendant’s advantage.” Unfortunately, change of opinion wrought from dear-bought experience takes not only recognition, but receptivity.
Id. at 737-738 (footnotes omitted).
As the Court of Appeals predicted, the flow of these direct appeals of interlocutory speedy trial orders became constant, adding to the already heavy dockets of Georgia’s appellate courts.
It must also be emphasized that the pretrial direct appeals that our cases allowed did little if anything to advance the constitutional right supposedly at issue. The lengthy delays that these appeals caused in getting cases to trial worked directly against society’s interests in speedy criminal trials. See Barker v. Wingo,
Nor are guaranteed pretrial appeals necessary to protect the defendant’s constitutional rights. Such appeals have very rarely been
In sum, the strict time limits applicable to the interlocutory appeal procedure and the ability of the trial and appellate courts to weed out weak claims prevent that process from being abused to obtain a lengthy delay of the trial where a speedy trial claim has no merit. See OCGA § 5-6-34 (b) (requiring the trial court to grant a certificate of intermediate review within ten days of the order, the defendant to file the interlocutory application within ten days after that, and the appellate court to grant or deny the application within 45 days). The direct appeals allowed by Boseman and Callaway were of real value only to those who misused them.
Finally, we should consider whether the doctrine of stare decisis counsels against overruling Boseman and Callaway. It does not.
In considering whether to reexamine a prior erroneous holding, we must balance the importance of having the question decided against the importance of having it decided*49 right. In doing so, we consider factors such as the age of the precedent, the reliance interests at stake, the workability of the decision, and, most importantly, the soundness of its reasoning.
State v. Jackson,
I am authorized to state that Justice Blackwell joins in this concurrence.
Although sometimes referred to as an “exception” to statutes allowing a direct appeal only from the final judgment in a case, the collateral order doctrine actually reflects a “practical rather than a technical construction” of such statutes, one that recognizes that a very “small class” of interlocutory rulings are effectively final in that they “finally determine claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action, too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.” Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp.,
OCGA § 17-7-171, which governs statutory speedy trial claims by defendants accused of capital offenses, includes similar procedural safeguards.
In all, the various Court of Appeals opinions criticizing Boseman and Callaway were joined hy four current Judges (Chief Judge Ellington, Presiding Judges Miller and Phipps, and Judge Andrews) as well as four former Judges (Eldridge, Blackburn, Johnson, and Mikell).
By my count, in just the last two full calendar years (2010 and 2011), this Court had to decide at least 13 such cases, and the Court of Appeals decided 30 more. It should be noted that in the many non-murder criminal appeals decided by the Court of Appeals, the defendant could obtain another multi-week or multi-month delay by filing a petition for certiorari in this Court.
For example, had Sosniak filed a statutory speedy trial motion after this Court’s interim review decision, by now he would have been put on trial or acquitted by operation of law. See Walker v. State,
In other cases, the Court of Appeals identified some error in the trial court’s analysis and remanded for the trial court to exercise its discretion again, free to reach the same result.