State v. Gallaher

580 P.2d 930, 177 Mont. 150, 1978 Mont. LEXIS 831
CourtMontana Supreme Court
DecidedJune 19, 1978
Docket13875
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 580 P.2d 930 (State v. Gallaher) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Montana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Gallaher, 580 P.2d 930, 177 Mont. 150, 1978 Mont. LEXIS 831 (Mo. 1978).

Opinion

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE HASWELL

delivered the opinion of the court.

Defendants Lynn Gallaher and Brian Coleman appeal from their convictions of committing the offense of escape and from their subsequent designation by the District Court as persistent felony offenders.

*152 At the time of their escape attempt, defendants Gallaher and Coleman were inmates at Montana State Prison, serving sentences for prior felony convictions. On January 6, 1977, Gallaher and Coleman, who had been undergoing hospital care at Powell County Hospital in Deer Lodge, Montana, were awaiting to be transported back to the prison by officer Dale Dodge of the Montana State Prison staff. Officer Robert McNally, the warden’s administrative assistant at the prison, was at the hospital at the same time conducting other business. Coincidentally, he was driving a “cage car”, a station wagon used to transport prisoners back and forth from the prison. When Officer Dodge discovered this, he telephoned prison authorities and arranged to transport Gallaher and Coleman back to the prison in Officer McNally’s car instead of waiting for another car and driver to arrive.

Officer Dodge escorted Gallaher and Coleman out of their hospital room and down the hallway to the hospital entrance. On their way they passed Officer McNally who was talking with others at a nurses’ station in the hallway. When the three arrived at the hospital entrance, Officer McNally was still some distance behind them. Once outside, Officer Dodge waited for Officer McNally to come out before putting defendants into the car. When Officer McNally did not immediately follow, the defendants looked at each other and decided to run for it.

As soon as the defendants began running, Officer Dodge shouted to them to stop. He first fired a warning shot high in the air and when defendants did not stop, he fired another over their heads. Eugene Hurlburt, a maintenance man at the hospital, and Officer Dodge then gave chase to defendants and caught both of them within two hundred yards of the hospital.

On January 31, 1977, Gallaher and Coleman were charged by information filed in the District Court, Third Judicial District, Powell County, with committing the offense of escape. Both defendants plead not guilty and the District Court set a trial date for March 10, 1977.

On March 9, 1977, the deputy county attorney served *153 defendant’s counsel with notices of intent to request a finding of persistent felony offender based on the prior felony convictions of each defendant. At that time, the prosecutor proposed to defense counsel that if the defendants changed their pleas to guilty, he would not file those requests.

At the outset of defendants’ trial, their counsel moved to withdraw their pleas of not guilty and to enter guilty pleas. The court asked defendants’ counsel whether defendants felt any compunction or duress to change their pleas. When defense counsel responded that if he was in the defendants’ position he would feel duress, the court denied his motion. The State then filed with the District Court a notice of request for finding of persistent felony offender against Gallaher for sentencing and parole purposes and a similar notice against Coleman for parole purposes. (Because Coleman was under 21 years of age at the time of committing the escape, he could not be sentenced as a persistent felony offender. Section 95-1507(2), R.C.M.1947 (amended 1977.)

At trial defendants attempted to establish the defense of entrapment through cross-examination of the State’s witnesses. The District Court sustained objections to certain of defense counsel’s cross-examination questions and subsequently refused all of defendants’ instructions on the entrapment defense. Defendants were eventually convicted by jury of committing the offense of escape. On April 4, 1977, the District Court designated both defendants as persistent felony offenders and sentenced them each to eight years in prison to be served consecutively to their prior sentences.

In their appeal defendants raise the following issues:

1. Did the manner in which the State used the habitual criminal statute during plea bargaining negotiations constitute an unlawful attempt to coerce a guilty plea in violation of the defendants’ constitutional right to a jury trial?

2. Did the District Court err in sustaining objections to certain of defense counsel’s cross-examination questions through which defendants attempted to develop a defense of entrapment?

3. Did the District Court err in refusing defendants’ instructions of the entrapment defense?

*154 Defendants’ first specification of error is that they were deprived of due process of law because less than 24 hours before trial the prosecutor threatened to invoke the habitual criminal statute unless the defendants changed their pleas to guilty. Defendants claimed that the habitual criminal statute was invoked to punish them for attenpting to exercise their right to a jury trial that the prosecutor knew of defendants’ prior felony convictions long before he filed notice of intent to seek increased punishment, that this action is inconsistent with a belief by the prosecutor that a longer sentence was necessary, and the record is barren of any justification for the prosecutor’s action. They argue that this Court’s holding in State v. Sather, (1977), 172 Mont. 428, 564 P.2d 1306, is dispositive of their case. They ask this Court to vacate their sentences, strike the State’s notices to seek increased punishment and remand their case for resentencing.

The State counters that there are decisive factual differences between this case and Sather-, consequently, it should not be regarded as controlling. Alternatively, it argues that the recent United States Supreme Court decision of Bordenkircher v. Hayes vitiate the Sather rationale. See, Bordenkircher v. Hayes, (1978), . . . U.S. . . . , 98 S.Ct. 663, 54 L.Ed.2d 604, 612, 22 Crim.L.R. 3023, rev 'g, Hayes v. Cowan, (6th Cir. 1976), 547 F.2d 42. In passing, we note that the Supreme Court’s holding in Bordenkircher was a narrow one. It held only that “* * * the course of conduct engaged in by the prosecutor in this case, which no more than openly presented the defendant with the unpleasant alternatives of foregoing trial or facing charges on which he was plainly subject to prosecution, did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” . . . U.S. at . . . , 98 S.Ct. at 669, 54 L.Ed.2d at 612. Because we agree with the State that this case is factually distinguishable from Sather, we conclude that Sather does not control the outcome of this case. Additionally, we find no due process violation involved here.

In Sather defendant Sather and Claude McIntosh were charged with the offenses of attempted burglary and theft on October 30, 1975. Both initially plead not guilty to the charges, but on October

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
580 P.2d 930, 177 Mont. 150, 1978 Mont. LEXIS 831, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-gallaher-mont-1978.