State of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Respondent v. Marc Alan Spearman, Defendant-Petitioner

Summary

The New Mexico Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals' reinstatement of criminal charges that the district court had dismissed on speedy trial grounds. Applying Barker v. Wingo, the court held that a district court justly may dismiss charges when the cause of delay weighs heavily against the State because of its own dilatory and deceptive conduct, even where the remaining factors favor the accused only slightly; the court agreed the reason for delay weighed extremely heavily against the State, but corrected the district court's heavy weighting of the sixteen-month delay and confirmed the defendant's assertion of the right was adequate though not aggressive. On prejudice, the court clarified that Garza did not eliminate the anxiety-and-concern prong and that an accused need not be incarcerated to suffer prejudice, but because allegations of counsel are not evidence and the record contained no proof linking the delay to the claimed job loss and bankruptcy, it remanded for an evidentiary hearing on the entire speedy trial issue. Justice Daniels specially concurred, agreeing with the remand while questioning the finding of prosecutorial deception, the rigid complexity categories, and dismissing prosecutions after granting continuances, and proposing that courts weigh speedy trial consequences before ruling on continuance requests.