Tipton v. Mont. Thirteenth Judicial Dist. Court

2018 MT 164, 421 P.3d 780, 392 Mont. 59
CourtMontana Supreme Court
DecidedJuly 5, 2018
DocketOP 17-0678
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 2018 MT 164 (Tipton v. Mont. Thirteenth Judicial Dist. Court) 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
Tipton v. Mont. Thirteenth Judicial Dist. Court, 2018 MT 164, 421 P.3d 780, 392 Mont. 59 (Mo. 2018).

Opinion

*782***60¶1 In 2014, DNA testing linked Ronald Dwight Tipton to the 1987 unsolved rape of an eight-year-old Billings girl. The State charged Tipton with sexual intercourse without consent of a minor under 16 years old. Tipton sought dismissal of the charges because the applicable statute of limitations had expired. The Thirteenth Judicial District Court denied Tipton's motion to dismiss. It determined that § 45-1-205(9), MCA, passed after the statute of limitations for the charged crime had expired, revived the otherwise time-barred prosecution. Tipton petitions this Court for a writ of supervisory control. We grant the petition and reverse the District Court's order. We restate the issues as follows:

(1) Whether § 45-1-205(9), MCA, applies retroactively;
(2) Whether applying § 45-1-205(9), MCA, to Tipton violates the ex post facto provisions of the Montana or United States Constitutions.

PROCEDURAL AND FACTUAL BACKGROUND

¶2 During the early morning hours of March 20, 1987, eight-year-old L.T. was asleep in her home in Billings when an unknown male woke her. He gagged her with a cloth belt and threatened to kill her if she did not keep quiet. The stranger proceeded to rape L.T. orally, vaginally, and anally. The man then covered L.T.'s head with a pillow and fled from the home. After the man left, L.T. woke her parents and told them what had happened.

¶3 The Billings Police Department responded immediately and the investigation moved quickly. Eight months later, a jury convicted Jimmy Ray Bromgard of the crime, based on substantial evidence, including L.T.'s description and identification of Bromgard as her attacker, testimony that Bromgard had not returned home that night until the early morning hours, and the recovery of the victim's parents' stolen checkbook near Bromgard's home. State v. Bromgard , 261 Mont. 291, 862 P.2d 1140 (1993). Bromgard was sentenced to forty years in prison. The case was considered closed.

¶4 At the time of the crime, investigators recovered a pair of L.T.'s ***61underwear stained with bodily fluids from her attacker. The evidence did not undergo DNA testing at that time, but was preserved. In 1994, this Court upheld the use of DNA evidence for the first time in a criminal trial in Montana, seven years after the crime at issue here. See State v. Moore , 268 Mont. 20, 31, 885 P.2d 457, 464 (1994). In 2002, upon the request of Bromgard, the biological material from the underwear underwent DNA testing. The DNA test proved conclusively that Bromgard had not committed the crime. Bromgard was released after additional court proceedings, and the Billings Police Department reopened the case.

¶5 Shortly after Bromgard's release, the DNA profile recovered from L.T.'s underwear was uploaded into the Combined DNA Index System known as CODIS. CODIS is a set of databases that allows law enforcement agencies to compare DNA profiles of forensic samples from unsolved cases with the DNA profiles of known offenders to generate investigative leads. The 1995 Legislature passed legislation requiring the Department of Justice to establish a central repository for DNA records for the State of Montana-what is now CODIS. See 1995 Mont. Laws ch. 251, § 2; Section 44-6-102, MCA. The Montana State Crime Lab uploaded its first DNA samples into CODIS in 2000.

¶6 The case remained open, but cold, until 2014. That year, Tipton submitted to DNA testing as part of a plea agreement to resolve felony drug charges against him in Meagher County. In November 2014, CODIS matched Tipton's DNA profile to the DNA profile recovered from L.T.'s underwear. Follow-up DNA testing confirmed that the *783DNA from the underwear belonged to Tipton. In November 2015, within one year of the confirmed match, the Yellowstone County Attorney charged Tipton with three counts of sexual intercourse without consent in violation of § 45-5-503(3)(a), MCA (1985).

¶7 Tipton filed a motion to dismiss the charges because the statute of limitations for the crime had expired. At the time of the crime, the statute of limitations for rape was five years. See § 45-1-205(1)(b), MCA (1985). In 1989, just two years after L.T. was raped, the Legislature amended the statute to allow for prosecution up to five years after the victim turned eighteen, if the victim was a minor at the time of the offense. See 1989 Mont. Laws ch. 294, § 1; § 45-1-205 (1989). L.T. turned eighteen on May 8, 1996. The statute of limitations for the ***62crime against her expired on May 8, 2001.1 When the statute of limitations for L.T.'s rape expired, Bromgard was still in prison for the crime.

¶8 In 2007, the Legislature added subsection (9) to the general statute of limitations codified at § 45-1-205, MCA. 2007 Mont. Laws ch. 446, § 1. The new subsection states, "If a suspect is conclusively identified by DNA testing after a time period prescribed in subsection (1)(b) or (1)(c) has expired, a prosecution may be commenced within 1 year after the suspect is conclusively identified by DNA testing." Section 45-1-205(9), MCA. Subsections (1)(b) and (1)(c) provide the statutes of limitations for sexual crimes, including § 45-5-503(3)(a), MCA. The District Court held that § 45-1-205(9), MCA, applied retroactively to the charges against Tipton. Relying in part on the Dissent in Stogner v. California , 539 U.S. 607, 123 S.Ct. 2446, 156 L.Ed.2d 544 (2003), the District Court also determined that the subsection did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. Because the County Attorney had filed charges within a year of the DNA identification, the District Court denied Tipton's motion to dismiss.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶9 This Court has supervisory control over all other courts in Montana, and may, on a case-by-case basis, supervise another court through a writ of supervisory control. Mont. Const. art. VII, § 2 (2); M. R. App. P. 14(3).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2018 MT 164, 421 P.3d 780, 392 Mont. 59, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tipton-v-mont-thirteenth-judicial-dist-court-mont-2018.