Man who beat burglary rap based on tardy prosecution argues appeal

A Columbus-area man has argued in a legal appeal that an Athens County judge was right to drop a felony charge against him, based on the fact that the county prosecutor's office took too long to get an indictment.

If an appeals court were to overturn the judge's decision to drop a burglary charge, an attorney for defendant Eric J. Miller has argued, this would "ignore the plain meaning" of an Ohio law that is supposed to prevent the state from holding off prosecuting an alleged crime while it waits for a defendant to get out of prison on another offense.

The Athens County Prosecutor's office has argued that once it dropped a case against Miller in Athens County Municipal Court, this stopped the clock on his right to a speedy trial, which then did not start up again until a grand jury later indicted him.

The prosecutor's office admits that the later indictment is based on essentially the same facts as the earlier charges. But it's fighting a decision by Athens County Common Pleas Judge Michael Ward, who last September agreed to drop a burglary charge against Miller, 32, of Galloway, Ohio.

Miller had been charged in connection with a 2009 incident in which he allegedly forced his way into his ex-girlfriend's apartment in Athens, held her against her will at knifepoint, and assaulted her.

What is at issue in his local case is how long the prosecutor's office took to indict him for this incident. In October 2009, he was charged in Athens County Municipal Court with kidnapping and aggravated burglary.

While that case was still pending, though, he was convicted and sent to state prison in connection with an aggravated assault charge out of Franklin County.

At that point, in July 2010, Miller's Public Defender attorney asked that his Athens County case be resolved early. The prosecutor's office then got a judge to dismiss Miller's case out of Municipal Court. This is something it often does as a prelude to seeking a felony indictment from a grand jury, because felony cases cannot be tried in the lower court.

Last September, however, after Miller got out of prison on a judicial release in the Franklin County case, the local prosecutor's office got a county grand jury to indict him for the 2009 incident in Athens.

His attorney then argued successfully that this new charge should be thrown out, because the state had taken more than 180 days to take action on the original Municipal Court case, thus violating Miller's speedy-trial rights.

The prosecutor's office has argued that as soon as the original charges were dismissed out of Municipal Court, the speedy trial clock stopped.

In their briefs to the Fourth District Court of Appeals, both sides have warned of dire legal consequences if they lose.

Miller's attorney, Stephen A. Goldmeier of the Ohio Public Defender's office, argues that if the appellate court sides with the prosecutor, this will mean that "the state could, as it seems to have done here, wait until a defendant completes incarceration and post-release control in other counties before even notifying that defendant that his prison time may not be over."

A defendant who has asked for disposition of his case as Miller did, Goldmeier maintains, could work for years to try to earn early release from prison, "only to find that his previously dismissed case has been resurrected years later to drag him back to jail."

This, the attorney contends, is "precisely the kind of result" that the applicable Ohio law is meant to avoid.

Athens County assistant prosecutor Merry M. Stacks, however, argues in her brief that if the appeals court finds that the speedy-trial clock didn't stop when the Municipal Court case was dismissed, this will "open the floodgates" and force all law-enforcement agencies to have to indict defendants within 180 days who are under investigation.