In a complicated logical exercise, the Nevada Supreme Court decided this week a prosecutor doesn't have to prove prior convictions are constitutionally valid before taking a felony DUI case to trial.
But in the 9-year-old case against David Earl Parsons, the court voted unanimously to toss out his conviction, saying prosecutors had no legal right to use an "information by affidavit" to cure legal deficiencies in their case after the fact.
The 18-page opinion describes the case as having a "long and tortured procedural history" that began in 1991 when Parsons was charged with felony DUI in Nye County.
The case was originally reduced to a misdemeanor by a justice of the peace who rejected one of the two prior convictions. The felony was reinstated by a district judge based on the district attorney's "information by affidavit" that contained additional evidence. Then Parsons was tried and convicted of felony DUI.
He appealed on two basic arguments. First, he said the justice court must consider the validity of the prior convictions before ordering a trial on felony charges. Second, he argued the prosecutors should not have been allowed to fix their case with new evidence in an information by affidavit.
The high court ruled that a justice court only needs to show that there are at least two prior DUI convictions before binding the case over to district court as a felony. The opinion signed by all seven justices said whether or not those priors are constitutionally valid should be decided at the time of sentencing - not before trial.
But the Supreme Court voted unanimously to throw out Parsons' conviction saying the district court should not have allowed the state to use an information by affidavit to fix the legal problems that originally reduced the case to a misdemeanor.
It described the statute allowing an information by affidavit as "a safeguard against egregious error by a magistrate in determining probable cause, not a device to be used by a prosecutor to satisfy deficiencies in evidence at a preliminary examination."
