If you're accused of a crime and required to answer to the charges against you in court, a clause of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives you the right to a speedy trial. In other words, you can't be held in custody indefinitely simply because prosecutors aren't prepared or your case is delayed for other reasons. Oregon and many other states also have statutes stating this right. Sometimes, however, it takes a push from a criminal defense attorney to exercise it.
A man from Aloha, Oregon, who's facing Measure 11 felony charges is well aware of this right, having sat in a jail cell for more than nine months as he awaited trial. The Oregon Supreme Court ordered him out of jail last week after it decided he'd been held in custody well beyond the mandatory pretrial limit.
The 25-year-old man was arrested July 24, 2011, after being accused of stabbing another man in the torso during a fight. He was charged with first-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon. Although Oregon law has a 60-day limit for keeping defendants in jail as they await trial, the defendant in this case was still incarcerated in March of this year, when prosecutors asked to postpone his trial a third time. A circuit judge granted a defense motion and dismissed the case, nearly eight months after the man was first charged.
But days later, prosecutors refiled the charges against the man and he was once again arrested and put in jail. The assistant attorney general reasoned that the clock restarted on the defendant's custody limit after the second arrest because the charges constituted a new case. The defendant's attorney argued that the charges arose from the same incident and that the time his client spent in jail before and after his release should be counted together.
The state's high court decided in favor of the defendant, stating that prosecutors could easily work around the 60-day limit by repeatedly dismissing charges and filing them again.
Because Measure 11 felonies are considered extremely serious crimes and carry high bail amounts, most defendants await trial in jail. But the man in this case has seen more than his share of pretrial incarceration, before he's been proven guilty. His case demonstrates the importance of finding a defense attorney who can effectively represent those accused of significant crimes long before the trial begins.
Source: Oregon Live, "Oregon Supreme Court orders man out of jail while he waits for trial in Aloha stabbing," Emily E. Smith, May 30, 2012
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