Sep 8, 2018 3 min read

The state Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors missed their deadline to bring a Washington County man who faced charges including aggravated assault to trial 14 years ago, even before he failed to show up for the proceeding.

The state’s highest court reversed a Superior Court decision saying Darel Barbour, 36, could be tried in two criminal cases dating to 2003. The new ruling hinged on a provision of the state rules of criminal procedure known as Rule 600, which gives the prosecution 365 days from the filing of charges to bring a case to trial.

“Two wrongs do not make a right, and a defendant’s failure to satisfy his obligation to appear in court does not excuse the Commonwealth’s earlier failure to satisfy its obligations under Rule 600,” concluded Justice David Wecht in the July 18 opinion he authored.

The original cases coincided with the tenure of then-district attorney John Pettit. His appeal occurred during the term of current District Attorney Gene Vittone, who took office in 2012.

Barbour, who’s listed in court records as living in Washington, had been charged in August 2003 in both cases – one brought by East Washington police including a charge of aggravated assault with a weapon, and another about two weeks later by city police, which included a count of leaving the scene of an accident.

Bench warrants were issued after Barbour failed to show up in court for a scheduled trial in October 2004 and again the following month. He next came into contact with the court system when he was arrested in an unrelated case in September 2014.

His attorney, Joshua Camson, relied on Rule 600 in a motion to dismiss both 2003 cases. Judge Valarie Costanzo granted his request, citing the “inexcusable failure of the Commonwealth to keep track of the time that had elapsed in these matters” and finding the prosecution had “waited over a year, without any justification, to bring either of these cases to trial.”

The Washington County district attorney’s office appealed to Superior Court, which agreed the prosecution’s deadline to try the case already had lapsed before Barbour missed his trial date, but “reasoned that a court could not condone Barbour’s absconsion by ‘permitting a defendant to file a motion to dismiss under Rule 600 after returning from 10 years as a fugitive'” and reversed Costanzo’s decision, according to Wecht’s opinion.

Camson then appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed with Costanzo and found that in cases like Barbour’s, when the Rule 600 “violation is independent from and unrelated to a defendant’s subsequent failure to appear, that violation is not cured by the defendant’s absence.”

This article has been updated to clarify which district attorneys were in office during the initial cases against Darel Barbour and, later, his appeal.