M.H. v. State

382 P.3d 1201, 2016 Alas. App. LEXIS 176
CourtCourt of Appeals of Alaska
DecidedSeptember 23, 2016
DocketCourt of Appeals No. A-12332
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 382 P.3d 1201 (M.H. v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Alaska primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
M.H. v. State, 382 P.3d 1201, 2016 Alas. App. LEXIS 176 (Ala. Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

OPINION

Judge MANNHEIMER.

Under Alaska Delinquency Rule 21(a), delinquency proceedings are tried to the court unless the juvenile requests a jury trial. Rule 21(a) also states that a request for jury trial must be made “no later than 20 days before any scheduled trial date” (unless there is good reason to allow the request to be made with less advance notice). The primary question presented in this appeal is how to interpret the phrase “scheduled trial date”.

In Alaska, most criminal and delinquency eases are not given a specific date for trial until just before they are actually tried.

Instead, if a case is to be tried, it will be placed among a group of cases that are presumptively ready for trial, and the entire group of cases will be scheduled for a status hearing or conference. This status hearing or conference is sometimes called a “trial call”, or a “calendar call”,' or simply a “scheduling hearing”. But regardless of its label, the function of this court proceeding is (1) to determine which cases among the group are, indeed, ready for trial, and (2) to establish the order in which the individual cases will be tried. Generally, the first case to be tried is given a date certain, and the others are put in a “trailing” status. That is, those' cases are brought to trial whenever the preceding case is resolved and the assigned judge becomes available.

For simplicity’s sake, we will refer to this court proceeding as a “trial call” in this opinion.

The issue in this appeal is whether the requirement of 20 days’ advance notice for requesting a jury trial should be calculated based on the date of the trial call, or whether this deadline should be calculated based on the specific trial date and time that the court sets later, as the court works its way through the list of cases to be. tried.

For the reasons explained in this opinion, we conclude that when a minor’s case is not given a specific trial date at the very beginning, but is instead scheduled for a trial call, the 20 days’ advance notice specified in Delinquency Rule 21(a) is calculated based on the date of that trial call.

Underlying facts

The State filed a delinquency petition against M.H., alleging that he had committed theft. In November 2014, the superior court set M.H.’s delinquency case for a trial call on January 6, 2015.

The attorneys handling M.H.’s delinquency case appeared at the trial call on January 6th, and they returned to court on January 8th. At that time, they announced that M.H.’s case had not been resolved, and that M.H. still wanted to go to trial. However, M.H.’s attorney also stated that she wished to raise a suppression issue.

The court allowed M.H.’s attorney to file the suppression motion the next day (January 9th). At that time, the prosecutor assigned to M.H.’s case noted that M.H. had not filed a request for a jury trial, so the prosecutor suggested that the court could resolve all of the pending matters by holding a combined evidentiary hearing and bench trial the following week (on January 15th).

In response to the prosecutor’s suggestion, M.H.’s attorney declared that M.H. wanted a jury trial. The superior court denied this request as untimely.

[1203]*1203On January 15th, the court held the evi-dentiary hearing and denied M.H.’s suppression motion. The court then proceeded to hold a bench trial on the underlying allegation against M.H. At the conclusion of this trial, the court found that M.H. had committed the charged theft, and the court adjudged M.H. to be a delinquent minor.

Why the 20 days’ advance notice specified in Delinquency Rule 21(a)is to be calculated based on the date of the trial call

As we explained earlier, Delinquency Rule 21(a) states that a minor’s request for a jury trial normally must be made “no later than 20 days before any scheduled trial date”.

M.H. argues that when a delinquency case is included among the group of cases at a trial call, the phrase “scheduled trial date” refers to the specific trial date and time that the court later establishes for the delinquency case as the court works its way through the group of eases to be tried.

M.H. acknowledges that, given the way trial calls work, it is exceedingly rare for litigants to have more than a few days’ notice of their specific trial date. Thus, as a practical matter, if a minor’s ease is among the group of cases scheduled for a trial call, it will be impossible for the minor to comply with Rule 21(a)’s requirement that the request for jury trial be made at least 20 days in advance of the trial date. M.H. argues that since compliance with the rule is impossible, he and all other similarly situated minors should be excused from the requirement of giving 20 days’ notice.

But if we were to interpret Delinquency Rule 21(a) in the way M.H. suggests, we would essentially delete the 20 days’ notice requirement for all delinquency cases that are scheduled for a trial call. This interpretation of the rule would be in direct conflict with the Alaska Supreme Court’s purpose in enacting the 20 days’ notice requirement.

The legislative history of Rule 21(a) shows that the supreme court established the requirement of 20 days’ advance notice only after the court checked with the area court administrators of Alaska’s four judicial districts to make sure that 20 days would give court administration adequate time to summon jury panels and make the other preparations needed for jury trials, especially in smaller court locations.1 The purpose of requiring 20 days’ advance notiee would be completely defeated if we adopted M.H.’s proposed interpretation of the rule.

We therefore hold that when a delinquency case is among the group of cases scheduled for a trial call, the 20 days’ advance notice required by Delinquency Rule 21(a) is to be calculated based on the date of that trial call.

The superior court did not abuse its discretion when it denied M.H.’s request for a relaxation of the 20 days’ notice requirement

M.H. argues, in the' alternative, that even if he needed to file his request for jury trial 20 days in advance of the trial call, the superior court nevertheless should have honored his tardy request for a jury trial because there was good cause to excuse his failure to meet the 20-day deadline.

In I.J. v. State, 182 P.3d 643 (Alaska App. 2008), this Court adopted a set of four criteria that the superior court should use when deciding whether to allow a minor to file a tardy request for jury trial in a delinquency matter. These criteria are:

(1) [whether] the request, although untimely ..., was nevertheless reasonably prompt given the litigation history of the case; (2) [whether] the request was made long enough in advance of the trial that granting the request would not pose a problem for the court’s scheduling and administrative handling of the case; (3) [whether] there [is] reasonable justification for not holding the [minor] to [their] earlier acquiescence in a non-jury trial; and (4) [whether] the record demonstrate^] that [1204]*1204the [State] would suffer no prejudice on account of the late request for a jury trial.

Id. at 647.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
382 P.3d 1201, 2016 Alas. App. LEXIS 176, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mh-v-state-alaskactapp-2016.