A shooting suspect's release revives the right to a speedy trial in Missouri.

• Author: Thompson, Clayton
• Position: Case note

State ex rel. Garcia v. Goldman, 316 S.W.3d 907 (Mo. 2010) (en banc), cert. denied, 131 S. Ct. 1603 (2011).

1. INTRODUCTION

   David Garcia was indicted for shooting a man in St. Louis. (1) Twelve years later he was arrested in Chicago and brought back to St. Louis County to stand trial for assault. (2) He invoked his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial under the United States Constitution. (3) The Supreme Court of Missouri agreed that his right had been violated and dismissed his indictment. (4)

   The outcome of State ex rel. Garcia v. Goldman signals that the Supreme Court of Missouri will not take lightly government delay in bringing the criminally accused to trial. As discussed below, the decision demonstrates the necessity of placing a burden on the state to ensure that the rights of criminal defendants are respected and that the Sixth Amendment remains an effective deterrent of government laxity.

   This Note will examine the history of the Sixth Amendment's speedy trial clause, highlighting its development within the last twenty years. It will attempt to explain the rationale behind the court's decision to dismiss the indictment of a possibly violent criminal. It will take the position that in future cases where the government is to blame for an unusually slow prosecution, the outcome of this case must be repeated to maintain the integrity of the right to a speedy trial and our criminal justice system.

2. FACTS AND HOLDING

   The events involving David Garcia that are the subject of this constitutional inquiry happened more than thirteen years ago. (5) In April of 1998, the owner of the sunny china Buffet in Kirkwood, Missouri, heard a knock at the kitchen door. (6) As he opened it, a man entered, briefly spoke with a restaurant employee, and left. (7) Within roughly a minute, the same man returned--this time with a shotgun. (8) He shot employee Rigoberto Dominguez in the stomach. (9) The assailant then fled the Chinese restaurant. (10)

   As the shooter left the restaurant, Meltion Gonzalez, a Sunny China employee, followed the assailant out the door and witnessed him jump into a brown car. (11) Another employee, Manuel Castro, also caught a glimpse of the shooter. (12) Dominguez, the victim, was also able to identify his assailant. (13) All three men agreed that David Garcia was the shooter. (14)

   When the police arrived at the restaurant, they found a Mossburg 12-gauge shotgun hidden in the bushes near the kitchen door where the shooter had entered. (15) The police interviewed Dominguez at the hospital. (16) He claimed that Garcia shot him because Dominguez had made comments about Garcia's girlfriend a few days earlier. (17) The police later questioned Nabor Garcia, David Garcia's cousin and roommate, as well as two other men about the incident. (18) The police videotaped the interrogations of Nabor Garcia and Meltion Gonzalez, a Sunny China employee. (19) The police lost these videotapes. (20)

   The Kirkwood Police Department investigated the crime scene and took witness statements, garnering Garcia's personal information, including his date of birth, driver's license number, Social Security number, and home address. (21) The police sought to use these particulars to locate Garcia. (22) But when the authorities went to the apartment Garcia shared with his cousin Nabor, he was not there. (23) Neither Nabor nor any other family members knew where Garcia had gone. (24) Individuals told the police that if Garcia were to leave Kirkwood, he would travel to California or Illinois. (25)

   Three years after the Sunny China shooting, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's office urged the Kirkwood Police to speed up the investigation. (26) The urgency stemmed from the imminent running of the statute of limitations for the assault charge. (27) Following a tip, Kirkwood Police Sgt. Steven Guyer spent four days searching for Garcia in north St. Louis County; his efforts bore no fruit. (28) Neither Guyer nor any other Kirkwood Police officer documented any of their efforts to locate Garcia during this time. (29)

   In February 2002, before the running of the statute of limitations, the prosecutor's office indicted Garcia--who was still missing--for first-degree assault. (30) Garcia's case went cold after his indictment. (31) For the next seven years the Kirkwood Police Department made no further efforts to bring Garcia into custody. (32)

   Sometime in early 2009, Kirkwood police officer Steve Urbeck learned Garcia had yet to be apprehended, so he entered Garcia's Social Security number into the department's Accurint system. (33) That search produced a Chicago address for Garcia. (34) Although Garcia's whereabouts between 1998 and 2000 are unknown, Garcia had been living openly in Chicago since 2002. (35) He had been using his real name and Social Security number, had obtained steady employment, and had filed tax returns using that information from 2000 to 2008. (36) The Kirkwood Police contacted the Chicago Police Department, who promptly arrested Garcia while at work at a hotel. (37) The trial court later determined that the Kirkwood Police could have located Garcia as early as 2002 if it had searched with his Social Security number. (38)

   When Garcia was brought to trial, he promptly moved to dismiss the first-degree assault indictment, alleging a violation of his right to a speedy trial under the United States Constitution. (39) The Honorable Steven Goldman of the St. Louis County Circuit Court denied Garcia's motion to dismiss. (40) Balancing the factors set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Barker v. Wingo, (41) Judge Goldman concluded that Garcia fled Kirkwood after the shooting, knew that there were witnesses of the shooting at Sunny China, and knew that the police were searching for him. (42) However, Judge Goldman also found that Garcia did not know of the indictment against him and that the Kirkwood Police Department did not use reasonable diligence in its pursuit of Garcia. (43)

   Garcia then filed a writ of mandamus with the Supreme Court of Missouri to compel Judge Goldman to grant the motion to dismiss. (44) The court issued a preliminary writ of mandamus and heard oral arguments. (45) In a 4-3 decision, the court held that Judge Goldman erred in denying Garcia's motion to dismiss and issued a permanent writ of mandamus. (46) It held that the seven-year delay between the indictment and the arrest was caused by the government's negligence and presumptively compromised Garcia's ability to defend himself at trial. (47) Because the government was unable to rebut this presump tion, the court concluded that Garcia's Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial had been violated. (48)

3. LEGAL BACKGROUND

   1. Pre-Barker v. Wingo

      The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution mandates that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial." (49) Similarly, the Missouri Constitution guarantees that "the accused shall have the right to... a speedy public trial by an impartial jury of the county." (50) The meaning of the speedy trial right has been expounded by the U.S. Supreme Court, (51) federal circuit courts, (52) and state courts. (53) Since it was first recognized in England, (54) the right to a speedy trial has been an important procedural safeguard for defendants and society alike. (55)

      The right to a speedy trial first appeared in Anglo-American law in the Magna Carta, which stated: "We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either justice or right." (56) The idea of a right to a speedy trial again appeared some five centuries later in the commentary of Sir Edward Coke. Coke wrote that England sought to ensure that prisoners would not "be long detained, but at their next coming have given the prisoner full and speedy justice." (57)

      The British sentiment that the criminally accused should enjoy a right to a speedy trial accompanied the American colonists when they settled here. In early America, the right to a speedy trial was explicitly mentioned in early colonial constitutions. (58) In 1791, Congress ratified the Sixth Amendment, and the right to a speedy trial became a safeguard for citizens against the powers of the U.S. government. (59) Today, the constitutions of all fifty states have speedy trial protections. (60)

      In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that an inquiry into an alleged speedy trial violation is fact-specific. (61) In Beavers v. Haubert, the defendant was first indicted in New York and was subsequently indicted for additional crimes in Washington, D.C. (62) The defendant was transferred to Washington, D.C. to face trial, and as a result, his indictments in New York were continued for three years. (63) He claimed the Washington, D.C., indictments violated his right to a speedy trial in New York. (64)

      The Supreme Court disagreed. (65) It explained that the right to a speedy trial is "consistent with delays and depends upon circumstances," meaning that the right is not absolute and cannot be invoked by a defendant every time his trial suffers postponement. (66) Instead, the Court held that the right to a speedy trial is "necessarily relative," and a judge must take into account "other considerations" than simply the long lapse of time in determining whether or not a right to speedy trial has been violated. (67)

      Nearly sixty years passed before the Supreme Court had another chance to expand upon the case-by-case test for determining a violation of the right to a speedy trial. In United States v. Ewell, (68) the U.S. Supreme Court held that the nineteen-month interval between the indictment and the trial of two defendants was not "in itself [a violation of] the speedy trial provision." (69) The defendants had been indicted for selling narcotics. (70) But after successfully getting their indictments dismissed for technical defects, the defendants were re-indicted for the same offense and again brought to trial. (71) The...