Speedy Trial
A couple of notes on speedy trial issues....
First, last week in State v. Hull the Ohio Supreme Court held that the speedy trial statute doesn't apply after an appellate court's vacation of a no contest plea. There'd been a contrary holding from our district two years ago in State v. Parker. Even Parker had held that speedy trial didn't apply after reversal of a verdict, so now the law is crystal clear: if you've got a case that came back from the court of appeals, for whatever reason, the only speedy trial rights that apply are constitutional. I'm not entirely comfortable with the decision -- it really doesn't engage in any more analysis than that the legislature didn't mention remands when it passed the statute -- but it's not too far-fetched, either, and it at least has the virtue of clarifying the law.
The other day a lawyer asked me the effect of speedy trial and reindictment, more particularly, whether the time runs during the period between dismissal and reindictment. This is pretty much of a no-brainer: it doesn't. The time under the original indictment is counted, at least when the new indictment is based on the same facts as the original one, and then picks up again when the defendant is arrested or arraigned under the new one, according to State v. Broughton, 62 OSt2d 253.
A couple of caveats to that. First, if the defendant is held in jail or on bail during the interval, the time does count. Speedy trial is calculated when there is a charge pending against the defendant, and if he's in jail or on bail, it's still pending. Second, there's a contrary holding out of the 1st District way back in 1976, in State v. Justice, 49 OApp2d 46, where the state dismissed a DWI case, then refiled, and the court held that the time should be calculated from the original arrest, with no tolling. You can always run that up the flagpole and see who salutes (and hope that the judge and prosecutor don't know any better), but I'm not too fond of citing cases that were decided back during the Ford administration, especially when there's an intervening Supreme Court case that blows you away.
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