The state Supreme Court reinstated two misdemeanor charges against a man in Putnam County on Thursday, overruling a judge who said the man hadn't been tried on the charges soon enough.
Putnam Circuit Judge Phillip Stowers had dismissed domestic battery and assault charges against Caleb Toparis, but Thursday's ruling means that Toparis still faces the charges.
In addition to the two misdemeanors, when Toparis was arrested in 2014, he was also charged with unlawful assault, a felony.
After a preliminary hearing in Putnam County Magistrate Court, a magistrate found there was probable cause to send the felony case against Toparis to circuit court. The magistrate told Toparis he could have a separate trial on the misdemeanor charges in magistrate court, or he could keep all three charges together in circuit court. Toparis chose to let all three charges to go circuit court.
While prosecutors were waiting to indict Toparis on the felony charge, they decided to go ahead and prosecute him on the misdemeanor charges, said assistant Putnam prosecutor Kristina Raynes. Prosecutors subsequently formally filed the misdemeanor charges against him in circuit court via an information charging document.
Toparis' attorney, Robert Kuenzel of Chapmanville, argued that his client would have had to have been tried within a year of the warrant issued for his arrest - and therefore prosecutors were violating speedy trial rules.
Raynes said though that when Toparis waived the misdemeanor charges to circuit court, the speedy trial rules of circuit court then applied. Those rules require prosecutors to try a defendant within three terms of court.
"There wasn't really any case law out there for this specific scenario so the judge had to go by what the court case law was at the time and dismiss the case with prejudice," Raynes said Thursday. "I didn't necessarily think that the judge acted outside of the scope of his jurisdiction but there was no clear cut rule as to this particular issue so that's why we had to use this mechanism [the writ] to try to get a clear cut rule."
Putnam Prosecuting Attorney Mark Sorsaia's office filed a writ of prohibition with the Supreme Court asking justices to clarify the law. Justices agreed with prosecutors and ruled that the speedy trial rules in circuit court should be applied in circumstances similar to those faced by Toparis.
"We now hold that when a magistrate court grants a motion filed by a defendant voluntarily waiving the right to trial in magistrate court on a misdemeanor charge and requesting the transfer of that misdemeanor charge to circuit court for resolution, the State is no longer required to bring the defendant to trial within one year of the execution of the criminal warrant," Justice Allen Loughry wrote for the court.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com,
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