In a unanimous decision April 13, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld an established principle that criminal defendants don’t have a duty to bring themselves to trial.
The responsibility to meet the defendant’s constitutional speedy trial rights lies squarely with the prosecutors and trial court, said the Supreme Court. The decision resulted in dismissing this particular defendant’s charges permanently in People v. DeGreat.
In 2018, the Supreme Court granted Edward DeGreat a retrial for charges of aggravated robbery and a violent crime sentence enhancer to allow him to bring new evidence of self-defense. Colorado’s speedy trial law requires a defendant to receive a retrial within six months after an appellate decision granting the new trial. Under case law and state criminal procedure rules, a trial court acts without jurisdiction if it tries a defendant in violation of their speedy trial rights.
“Colorado’s speedy trial statute is intended to safeguard a defendant’s constitutional right to a speedy trial and to prevent unnecessary prosecutorial and judicial delays in the prosecution of a criminal case,” wrote Justice Melissa Hart in the decision.
The case highlights a seeming philosophical juxtaposition: the legal ability to toll the six-month period if a defendant causes a trial delay with the Supreme Court’s view that in the spirit of Colorado’s speedy trial law, defendants have no responsibility to bring themselves to trial.
In DeGreat’s case, the prosecution claimed DeGreat caused a delay in his retrial by failing to reach out to schedule a status conference. But according to the Supreme Court’s decision, the prosecution did not make an effort to schedule a conference either, and the trial court didn’t take any action.
In June 2019, 29 days past a six-month deadline under the Court of Appeals ruling ordering DeGreat’s retrial, the defense filed a motion to dismiss his charges.
But according to the Supreme Court, neither the prosecution nor the district court responded to the motion for four months, despite two more requests from the defense for a decision.
The district court denied the motion to dismiss in October, saying the failure of lawyers on both sides of the case to schedule a status conference tolled the speedy trial statute. DeGreat’s public defenders then brought the issue to the Supreme Court.
In a 14-page decision, Hart wrote the court’s ruling turns on the rigidity of the language in Colorado’s speedy trial statute. Trial courts don’t have discretion to make exceptions to the six-month requirement beyond what the law lays out.
For a trial delay to have been caused by a defendant, they must have expressly consented to it or taken other action that clearly shows intent to waive their speedy trial right.
Hart wrote the defense’s failure to reach out for scheduling a status conference for DeGreat’s retrial does not amount to express consent to waiving his speedy trial rights.
She added DeGreat’s defense fulfilled its responsibility to protect his speedy trial rights by filing the motion to dismiss his charges after the six-month period passed without a retrial.
“To suggest that it was incumbent upon DeGreat to do more to safeguard his rights under the statute flies in the face of our speedy trial jurisprudence,” Hart wrote.
Hart capped the decision by saying DeGreat’s speedy trial rights were violated even if the court agreed he caused the trial delay, given that the trial court took four months to rule on DeGreat’s motion to dismiss his charges and then set a status conference date to take place 201 days after the Court of Appeals issued DeGreat’s retrial.
“Even excluding the time from the court’s scheduling order of Dec. 3, 2018, to the filing of DeGreat’s motion to dismiss on June 4, 2019, the first scheduled hearing in this case would have been set for 201 days after the mandate issued — well outside of the statutory six-month speedy trial period.”
When Hart analyzed the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over DeGreat’s request to hear his case, she said it was necessary for the court to take it for DeGreat to have an adequate appellate remedy.
“Section 18-1-405 requires dismissal with prejudice if a defendant’s statutory speedy trial right is violated. Thus, even a successful appeal in DeGreat’s case would be a pyrrhic victory because DeGreat would first be subjected to the very trial he is entitled by statute to avoid.
This statutory right not to be tried all but requires DeGreat to avail himself of an ‘extraordinary remedy’ outside of the normal appellate process.”
—Julia Cardi