State v. Contreras

291 P.3d 799, 253 Or. App. 693, 2012 Ore. App. LEXIS 1449
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedDecember 5, 2012
DocketMI070602; A143758
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 291 P.3d 799 (State v. Contreras) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Contreras, 291 P.3d 799, 253 Or. App. 693, 2012 Ore. App. LEXIS 1449 (Or. Ct. App. 2012).

Opinion

SERCOMBE, J.

Defendant was convicted of misdemeanor driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII), ORS 813.010, after his first trial on the charge resulted in a hung jury. He appeals the denial of his motion to dismiss the case under ORS 135.747, the statutory speedy trial provision. That motion was filed shortly before the second trial. We conclude that ORS 135.747 regulates only the timing of the first trial and that defendant waived any objection to the timeliness of that trial by failing to file a motion to dismiss before commencement of the trial proceedings. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court’s denial of the motion to dismiss.

Only a statement of the bare chronology of the case is necessary to provide context for its resolution. Defendant was arrested for DUII on August 14,2007. An information for that charge issued the next day. Trial was set for January 28, 2008. The trial date was postponed a number of times at the behest of the trial court, the state, and defendant. Defendant was brought to trial on May 20, 2009, but a mistrial was declared because the jury was unable to agree on a verdict. Ultimately, the trial was reset for October 7, 2009.

On September 30, 2009, defendant moved for dismissal under ORS 135.747. That statute 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.”

Defendant argued that the nearly 26-month delay between the issuance of the information and the second trial date was largely attributable to the state and sufficiently unreasonable to warrant dismissal under ORS 135.747. The state remonstrated that the motion was “moot” since the dismissal was sought after defendant was tried.

The trial court concluded that 18.5 months of the delay were attributable to the state, i.e., not sought or consented to by defendant, and assumed that the delay was unreasonable. The court denied the motion nonetheless under ORS 135.750, which provides:

[695]*695“If the defendant is not proceeded against or tried, as provided in ORS 135.745 and 135.747, and sufficient reason therefor is shown, the court may order the action to be continued ***.”

The court ' reasoned that the delays were caused by reasonable circumstances — the hung jury, higher priority settings displacing the scheduled trial dates, and the unavailability of a witness due to a physical injury — and that those reasons were sufficient to continue the case.

On appeal, the parties reprise their contentions below. We conclude that the only relevant period of delay, for purposes of ORS 135.747, is the delay that preceded the first trial. We also agree with the state that the right to a statutory speedy trial is waived if the motion is not filed until after a defendant has already been brought to trial. Because defendant failed to object to the delay before the trial occurred, the trial court did not err in denying the motion.

We recently decided in State v. Garner, 253 Or App 64, 289 P3d 351 (2012), that ORS 135.747 does not limit the time within which to bring a defendant to a second trial, after an initial trial results in a mistrial. In Garner, the defendant’s criminal charge was dismissed after a mistrial, the state appealed and obtained a reversal of the dismissal after a lengthy appellate process, the defendant’s motion to dismiss under ORS 135.747 was allowed, and the state appealed that dismissal. Id. at 65-68. We reversed, concluding that the defendant was “brought to trial” in a reasonable period of time under ORS 135.747 in the proceeding that resulted in the mistrial. The analysis began with the wording of ORS 135.747:

“Our interpretive task begins with the text of the statute, giving ‘words that have well-defined legal meanings those meanings.’ Fresk v. Kraemer, 337 Or 513, 520, 99 P3d 282 (2004). In common legal parlance, a defendant is ‘brought to trial’ when ‘the trial is commenced.’ Black’s Law Dictionary 242 (4th ed 1968). Thus, the literal command of the statute is satisfied when a defendant’s trial is commenced even if that trial ultimately ends in a mistrial and the defendant is retried. Simply put, ORS 135.747 does not apply to retrials following a mistrial. To hold otherwise would require us [696]*696to modify the text of the statute contrary to ORS 174.010, which provides, in part, that, ‘[i]n the construction of a statute, the office of the judge is simply to ascertain and declare what is, in terms or in substance, contained therein, not to insert what has been omitted, or to omit what has been inserted [.]”’

Id. at 69-70 (footnote omitted; brackets in Garner).

We determined that this construction of ORS 135.747 was faithful to the purpose of the statute:

“Moreover, that understanding of the statute is consistent with the statute’s underlying purpose. In State v. Emery, 318 Or 460, 869 P2d 859 (1994), the court examined the text and context of ORS 135.747 as well as the evolution of the case law concerning statutory and constitutional speedy trial protections. The court concluded that the purpose of the statute is not to protect defendants from prejudicial delays — -as does the guarantee in Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution — but, rather, is to prevent cases from languishing in the criminal justice system’ without ‘prosecutorial action.’ Once a trial has been commenced, a case is no longer languishing for purposes of ORS 135.747.”

Id. at 70 (some citations omitted); see also State v. Johnson,

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
291 P.3d 799, 253 Or. App. 693, 2012 Ore. App. LEXIS 1449, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-contreras-orctapp-2012.