The state appeals from an order dismissing, on statutory speedy trial grounds, ORS 135.747,
The underlying circumstances of this case are pedestrian. And, as with virtually every statutory speedy trial appeal, a detailed, even pedantic, recounting of the operative facts seems unavoidable. We turn, then, to those facts.
On September 1, 2006, the state filed a complaint against defendant for misdemeanor DUII. Defendant’s trial was initially set for January 10,2007. Although the trial was continued or reset several times, defendant requested only a single continuance that resulted in a delay of approximately 50 days. Ultimately, defendant proceeded to trial on June 6, 2007 — approximately nine months after the complaint had been filed — but it ended when the state caused a mistrial. Thereafter, defendant moved to dismiss the complaint against him on former jeopardy grounds, and, on July 25, the trial court granted that motion. On August 21, 2007, the state timely appealed the trial court’s dismissal.
Defendant then sought review in the Supreme Court on May 5,2010. That court denied review on July 29, and the appellate judgment issued a month later on August 27.
The trial court scheduled defendant’s retrial for December 9, 2010. On November 23, approximately two weeks before his December 9 trial date, defendant filed a motion to dismiss his case on, inter alia, statutory speedy trial grounds.
The parties’ competing contentions concerning defendant’s motion were predicated on an underlying assumption — viz., that the circumstances relevant to the disposition of defendant’s motion spanned roughly 50 months from the time that the complaint was filed in September 2006 to the then-current trial date in December 2010. In other words, the parties assumed that, for purposes of ORS 135.747, even though defendant’s first trial ended in a mistrial in June 2007, defendant had not yet been “brought to trial” as of the time that he filed his motion to dismiss in November 2010.
In support of that motion, defendant contended that he had not been “brought to trial within a reasonable period of time” as required by ORS 135.747 for two reasons. First, defendant contended that most of the delay attributable to the state’s first appeal in Garner I — viz., the approximately eight months between the completion of the briefing and oral argument and the 11 months between oral argument and the issuance of our decision — was unreasonable. Second, relying primarily on our decision in State v. Adams,
The state remonstrated that Adams was inapposite because it did not involve a pretrial appeal. Further, the state contended that the time expended on appeal was “reasonable and typical for a case of this kind, and in some ways * * * shorter than average.” In support of its position, the state presented the testimony of Susan Howe, the Senior Assistant Attorney General who acted as appellate counsel in Garner I. In general terms, Howe testified that the case was briefed, scheduled for argument, and ultimately decided within typical time lines.
Ultimately, the trial court granted defendant’s motion to dismiss on statutory speedy trial grounds. The court explained that “[approximately 42 months of [the total 50-month delay was] attributable to the state.” In determining that the case must be dismissed on statutory speedy trial grounds, the court’s analysis essentially focused on the 19 months that was attributable to this court — that is, the eight months that elapsed between the completion of the briefing and oral argument and the 11 months between oral argument and the issuance of our decision.
“due to the workload of the Court of Appeals. I accept that the Court of Appeals worked diligently on this case, and all other cases before it during this period. Nevertheless, 20 months is too long for the court to decide a case of this limited complexity. Absent a huge backlog of cases and inadequate resources to handle its caseload, it should have taken about half that long for the appellate court to move from receiving defendant’s brief to issuing a judgment.”
Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Adams II, the trial court reasoned that “[s]ome delay, no matter the type, is unreasonable simply because it is so long” and
“where there is a single issue, relatively simple appeal on a misdemeanor DUII case, an [appellate] delay of one and one half of the statute of limitations — three years — is unacceptable. Here, the total delay caused by the government was one and three quarters of the statute of limitations— three and a half years [or 42 months]. That is simply too long. Accordingly, I must grant the motion to dismiss for violation of defendant’s statutory speedy trial rights.”3
The state appeals the trial court’s resulting order. See ORS 138.060(l)(a) (providing that the state may appeal a pretrial order dismissing an accusatory instrument). Relying primarily on the Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Johnson,
With the parties’ appellate contentions so framed, we turn to the overarching legal issue in this case — viz., whether defendant was “brought to trial within a reasonable period of time” pursuant to ORS 135.747. To determine whether a period of time is reasonable, we must calculate the length of that period, which necessarily requires that we fix when it begins and when it ends.
The parties have not addressed the meaning of the term “brought to trial.” Instead, as previously explained,
Despite that operative assumption and the fact that neither party has addressed the meaning of the term “brought to trial” in ORS 135.747, when the operation of a statute is unavoidably, directly implicated, we are required to interpret the statute correctly. Stull v. Hoke,
Our interpretive task begins with the text of the statute, giving “words that have well-defined legal meanings those meanings.” Fresk v. Kraemer,
Moreover, that understanding of the statute is consistent with the statute’s underlying purpose. In State v. Emery,
Although we are unaware of any case in which an Oregon appellate court has expressly addressed the meaning of the term “brought to trial” for purposes of ORS 135.747 when a defendant is retried following a mistrial, at least three cases — Adams II,
In Adams, the defendant’s March 2002 trial ended in a mistrial as to one of the charges against him because the jury could not reach a decision. Adams II,
Unlike in Adams, in Cunningham and Hampton, we assumed that, following a mistrial, a defendant is brought to trial for purposes of ORS 135.747 as of the retrial date. In Cunningham, the defendant was indicted on July 23, 2004, and was brought to trial on December 3, 2004.
In Hampton, the defendant’s case was initially dismissed on the state’s motion and the case was “reissued” on March 17,1995.
Despite our inconsistent treatment concerning when a defendant is “brought to trial” for purposes of ORS 135.747, we now conclude that, consistently with the plain text of the statute and the Supreme Court’s decision in Adams II, a defendant is brought to trial when the trial commences even if it ultimately ends in a mistrial. To the extent that we assumed to the contrary in Cunningham, we disavow that assumption here. Further, because our holding in Hampton was predicated on that erroneous assumption, we now overrule that case.
Here, the total period of delay from the September 1, 2006, complaint to defendant’s original trial on June 6, 2007, is approximately nine months or 278 days.
Nevertheless, defendant’s constitutional speedy trial protections remain.
“[djefendant’s constitutional right to the administration of justice without delay is not extinguished upon the commencement of the original trial * * *, the return of the first jury’s verdict, or the entry of the first judgment that sentenced defendant to death. Rather, the constitutional right extends to every component of the criminal prosecution,*74 including the imposition of a sentence in accordance with applicable law.
“As this case illustrates, one or more appeals of a judgment imposing a sentence for criminal conduct can produce proceedings on remand to the trial court that aim to correct legal errors and ultimately lead to a final judgment that satisfies all pertinent requirements for the determination of guilt and the imposition of a lawful sentence. Properly viewed, an appeal is a component of the criminal justice system that, by correcting errors in the trial, permits the trial court on remand to proceed with trial with a correct understanding of the law and to enter a lawful judgment. Throughout the processes of a criminal trial, appeal, and any further trial proceedings on remand, the constitutional right to the administration of justice without delay applies.”
Here, however, we need not address whether defendant’s constitutional protections were violated. As we previously explained,
In sum, defendant was “brought to trial” for purposes of ORS 135.747 in June 2007 even though that trial ultimately ended in a mistrial. Because the period within which he was brought to trial was reasonable, the trial court erred in granting his motion to dismiss on statutory speedy trial grounds. Accordingly, we must reverse and remand.
Reversed and remanded.
Notes
ORS 135.747 provides:
“If a defendant charged with a crime, whose trial has not been postponed upon the application of the defendant or by the consent of the defendant, is not brought to trial within a reasonable period of time, the court shall order the accusatory instrument to be dismissed.”
The trial court found that it took us 8.5 months to set oral argument and 10.5 months to issue our decision. However, as demonstrated by our recitation of the procedural facts,
The trial court rejected defendant’s contention that the pretrial systemic delay compelled dismissal with prejudice under Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution and the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution because defendant had failed to demonstrate “the prejudice that would be necessary to justify a dismissal on state or federal constitutional grounds.” The trial court’s ruling in that regard is not at issue on appeal.
See Adams I,
The plain meanings of the component parts of the term “brought to trial” are consistent with the common legal definition. See Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary 278 (unabridged ed 2002) (defining the word “bring” to mean, inter alia, “institute <~ legal aetion> <~ a complaint>”); id. at 2439 (defining “trial” to mean “2 : the formal examination of the matter in issue in a cause before a competent tribunal for the purpose of determining such issue : the mode of determining a question of fact in a court of law: as a : such an examination of an issue of law when it is before a judge alone or of fact when it is usu. before a judge and jury b : all proceedings from the time when the parties are called to try their cases in court or from the time when issue is joined to the time of its final determination c : such proceedings subsequent to swearing in a jury”).
Interestingly, before the Supreme Court, the state noted that our 27-month calculation erroneously excluded the five months between the mistrial and the defendant’s scheduled retrial. Petitioner on Review’s Brief at 38 n 25, State v. Adams,
We note that, in In re Clark,
Further, In re Clark does not even refer to, much less purport to construe, the term “brought to trial.” Rather, the court in In re Clark merely referred in passing to the then-extant predecessor to ORS 135.747 without amplification or analysis. Finally, even if In re Clark could somehow be deemed to have held that, in the event of a mistrial a person has not been “brought to trial,” that conclusion would be irreconcilable with the Supreme Court’s subsequent analytic premise in Adams II.
We need not decide the precise point at which defendant’s June 6 trial commenced. See Webster’s at 2439 (defining the term “trial” to include (a) “all proceedings from the time when the parties are called to try their cases in court” or (b) “such proceedings subsequent to swearing in a jury”). That is so because, as we noted in Garner I,
Specifically, Article I, section 10, provides, in part, that “justice shall be administered *** without delay.” The Sixth Amendment provides that, “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial!.]”