GARCIA RODRIGUEZ v. STATE (2025)

MEMORANDUM DECISION

[1] Our Supreme Court's precedents require a defendant who seeks dismissal of the State's charges due to an alleged speedy-trial violation under Indiana Criminal Rule 4(B) to affirmatively present to the trial court evidence of that violation, even if that evidence is the court's own records. Alberto Garcia-Rodriguez did not do so here. Accordingly, we cannot say that the trial court erred when it denied his motion to dismiss.

Facts and Procedural History

[2] On March 15, 2024, the State charged Garcia-Rodriguez with Level 5 felony domestic battery, Level 5 felony battery, Level 6 felony intimidation, Level 6 felony criminal confinement, and Class A misdemeanor domestic battery. The State later amended its information to add two counts of Class A misdemeanor invasion of privacy.

[3] On July 2, Garcia-Rodriguez filed his motion for an early trial under Indiana Criminal Rule 4(B), which generally required the court to hold his trial within seventy days of the filing of that motion. The court eventually scheduled Garcia-Rodriguez's trial for September 9, the day before the seventy-day deadline was set to expire.

[4] On September 9, the parties appeared before the court, and the court informed them that it would have to reschedule Garcia-Rodriguez's trial to a later date due to court congestion. The court stated that Garcia-Rodriguez's case was “our second-choice matter, and I have confirmed our first-choice matter.” Tr. Vol. 2, p. 16. Garcia-Rodriguez objected to having his trial rescheduled, which the court overruled.

[5] That same day, the court entered its written order continuing the trial. In the written order, the court stated:

The court on its own motion pursuant to Criminal Rule 4 takes notice of the court's congested calendar, in that the court will be trying:

Case Name: [J.R.M.,] Cause No: 49D30-2202-F3-004819 [(“Cause No. F3-4819”).1]

The court now vacates the trial date of this cause and orders this matter reset on the first available trial date.

Appellant's App. Vol. 2, p. 102.

[6] Two days later, i.e., the day after the seventy-day deadline had passed, Garcia-Rodriguez moved to dismiss the State's charges under Criminal Rule 4(B). In that motion, Garcia-Rodriguez asserted that the defendant in Cause No. F3-4819 “never asserted his right to a fast and speedy trial, and the case was not set for a [s]peedy [t]rial on September 9, 2024.” Id. at 105. Thus, Garcia-Rodriguez continued, his case “should have been prioritized over” Cause No. F3-4819 on September 9, and the failure to hold his trial within seventy days of his early-trial motion required the court to dismiss the State's charges against him. Id. But Garcia-Rodriguez did not attach any records from Cause No. F3-4819 to his motion to dismiss. The trial court summarily denied Garcia-Rodriguez's motion the next day.

[7] In October, the court held Garcia-Rodriguez's jury trial. The jury found Garcia-Rodriguez guilty of several of the charged offenses, and the court entered judgment of conviction against Garcia-Rodriguez for Level 5 felony domestic battery, Level 6 felony intimidation, and two counts of Class A misdemeanor invasion of privacy. The court then sentenced Garcia-Rodriguez accordingly.

[8] This appeal ensued.

Discussion and Decision

[9] On appeal, Garcia-Rodriguez contends that the trial court erred when it denied his motion to dismiss under Criminal Rule 4(B). As our Supreme Court has explained:

Criminal Rule 4 implements a criminal defendant's constitutional right to a speedy trial. U.S. Const. amend. VI; Ind. Const. art. 1, § 12; Crim. R. 4. Rule 4 places the onus on the State to bring defendants to trial and gives them a procedure to invoke their speedy-trial right. Austin v. State, 997 N.E.2d 1027, 1037 (Ind. 2013). The rule is not meant to give defendants a “technical means to avoid trial but rather to assure speedy trials.” Cundiff v. State, 967 N.E.2d 1026, 1028 (Ind. 2012).

Under Rule 4[(B)], a defendant may move for a speedy trial, which obliges the State to bring the defendant to trial within seventy days, or else the [charges must be dismissed.2] But this obligation has exceptions. A court may delay the start of trial past the seventy-day window due to congestion of the court's calendar or an emergency․

Grimes v. State, 235 N.E.3d 1224, 1230 (Ind. 2024).

[10] Our Supreme Court applies a “burden-shifting test” to “evaluate a trial court's decision to reschedule a trial past the seventy-day deadline for calendar congestion.” Id. at 1231. The test “starts with the trial court's order finding the court's schedule is congested and continuing the trial date.” Id. That finding “is presumed correct” and shifts the burden to the defendant both to object to the continuation of his trial and also to move to dismiss the State's charges once the seventy-day deadline passes without a trial. Id. In his motion to dismiss, “the defendant must show that the court's congestion finding was factually or legally inaccurate ․” Id. (quotation marks omitted). If he does so, the burden shifts back to the trial court to further explain itself if it denies the motion to dismiss. See id. at 1234.

[11] The degree of the defendant's burden in his motion to dismiss to rebut the trial court's congestion finding is a function of the explanation given by the trial court to support that finding at the time of the continuance. See id. at 1231. If the trial court provided no explanation for its finding at the time of the continuance, the defendant's motion to dismiss need only show that the court committed prima facie error in finding congestion. Id. However, where the trial court explains its congestion finding at the time of the continuance, to succeed on the motion to dismiss “the defendant must show that the ․ finding was clearly erroneous.” Id. Our trial courts “can typically meet [their] low burden of showing congestion by offering a simple factual basis to support [the] finding— e.g., by noting the case and cause number requiring priority treatment.” Bradley v. State, 248 N.E.3d 563, 573 n.4 (Ind. 2024).

[12] Under either the prima facie standard or the clearly erroneous standard, the defendant must include with his motion to dismiss “evidence” that is “sufficient” to show that “the court's congestion finding was incorrect when the court continued the trial.” Grimes, at 235 N.E.3d at 1233. For example, in Grimes, our Supreme Court held that the defendant met his burden to show prima facie error in the court's finding of congestion when he included with his motion to dismiss a copy of the court's own docket, albeit a docket dated nine days after the trial court's congestion finding. Id. at 1234.

[13] Here, at the September 9 hearing, the court found that calendar congestion required it to reschedule Garcia-Rodriguez's trial past the seventy-day deadline. The court specifically found that Cause No. F3-4819 had “first-choice” priority over Garcia-Rodriguez's case. Tr. Vol. 2, p. 16. The court's finding shifted the burden to Garcia-Rodriguez to promptly object, which he did, and then to move to dismiss the State's charges once the seventy-day deadline had passed, which he also did.

[14] However, Garcia-Rodriguez's argument on appeal notwithstanding, his objection and motion alone were not sufficient to demonstrate that the court's congestion finding was clearly erroneous.³ Rather, the burden was on him to include evidence with his motion to dismiss to show that the court's congestion finding was incorrect. But Garcia-Rodriguez included no evidence with his motion to dismiss; he simply asserted that the court was wrong. Thus, Garcia-Rodriguez did not meet his burden under Criminal Rule 4(B) to show, in his motion to dismiss, that the court's congestion finding was clearly erroneous.

[15] Still, Garcia-Rodriguez argues that he “did not need to ask the trial court to judicially notice” records from Cause No. F3-4819, and, similarly, he did not need to attach any records from that cause number himself, “because the trial court had already taken notice” of its own records in the written September 9 order. Appellant's Br. at 10-11. But the court did not take judicial notice of the records from Cause No. F3-4819 in its written order. Rather, the court stated that it “takes notice of the court's congested calendar ․” Appellant's App. Vol. 2, p. 102. Taking notice of the court's calendar is not equivalent to taking notice of the records from another cause number. And Garcia-Rodriguez does not suggest that the trial court's calendar alone demonstrates that the court's congestion finding is clearly erroneous.

[16] In his Reply Brief, Garcia-Rodriguez asks that our Court take judicial notice of any relevant records from Cause No. F3-4819. We agree and take judicial notice of the chronological case summary (“CCS”) from Cause No. F3-4819. That CCS demonstrates that the defendant in Cause No. F3-4819 was charged in February 2022, arrested in September 2022, and never requested a speedy trial. Indeed, he moved for, joined in, or did not oppose ten continuances of his trial date following his arrest and prior to his September 9, 2024, trial. The defendant's case in Cause No. F3-4819 was also consolidated with a misdemeanor case that had been pending since 2016, but the defendant had never been separately held in jail in that case. Further, the charges in the misdemeanor case were dismissed in January 2024.

[17] Had Garcia-Rodriguez properly included that CCS with his motion to dismiss, he would have at least cast serious doubt on the trial court's assertion that the defendant in Cause No. F3-4819 was entitled to priority over Garcia-Rodriguez's case. As our Supreme Court has long made clear, “a defendant seeking a speedy trial would almost invariably be entitled to a trial setting ahead of any criminal defendant who had not filed a Rule 4 motion.” Austin v. State, 997 N.E.2d 1027, 1041 (Ind. 2013).

[18] But that does not mean that Garcia-Rodriguez would have been entitled to have the State's charges dismissed at that point. Rather, had Garcia-Rodriguez included the CCS with his motion to dismiss, the burden would have shifted back to the trial court to further explain its congestion finding if the court were to deny the motion to dismiss. See id. at 1042; see also Grimes, 235 N.E.3d at 1234. Indeed, while Rule 4 cases generally receive priority over non-Rule 4 cases, there is no “bright-line approach whereby all other cases must yield to the defendant who files a speedy trial motion,” and “a variety of things could constitute congestion” of the court's calendar aside from which cases are Rule 4 cases and which are not. Austin, 997 N.E.2d at 1040, 1042.

[19] And that is the critical flaw with Garcia-Rodriguez's motion to dismiss in the trial court. Because he did not attach the CCS from Cause No. F3-4819 to his motion to dismiss, he did not shift the burden back to the trial court to further explain its congestion finding. Therefore, we can take nothing from the court's ensuing summary denial of his motion to dismiss other than the correct conclusion that Garcia-Rodriguez's motion was unsupported. Accordingly, and despite our taking notice of the CCS from Cause No. F3-4819, we cannot say that the trial court erred when it denied Garcia-Rodriguez's motion to dismiss.

[20] For all of these reasons, we affirm the trial court's denial of Garcia-Rodriguez's motion to dismiss.

[21] Affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

1.   The records from Cause No. F3-4819 were publicly available at the time Garcia-Rodriguez made his speedy-trial arguments to the trial court. However, that cause number has since been expunged.

2.   An amendment to Criminal Rule 4(B), effective January 1, 2024, changed the Rule's language from the discharge of the defendant to the dismissal of the charges. See Grimes v. State, 235 N.E.3d 1224, 1230 (Ind. 2024). But our Supreme Court has recognized that the “substance” of the Rule “remains unchanged” despite that change in language. Id.

3.   Garcia-Rodriguez asserts that his burden in his motion to dismiss was the prima facie error standard and, relatedly, that the trial court's summary denial of his motion to dismiss was insufficient to rebut his purported showing under that standard. But Garcia-Rodriguez's argument is incorrect; the trial court made a specific finding in support of congestion at the time of the continuance. See Bradley, 248 N.E.3d at 573 n.4. Thus, the burden was on Garcia-Rodriguez to show in his motion to dismiss that the trial court's finding was clearly erroneous. See Grimes, 235 N.E.3d at 1231.

Mathias, Judge.

Foley, J., and Felix, J., concur.