Background
William P. Collins was charged in Washington County, Nebraska, with first degree murder and eight additional counts following an incident in early 2024. The State sought the death penalty and alleged three aggravating circumstances in the information. From the outset, the case generated extensive pretrial litigation: Collins filed successive motions to quash the original information, an amended information, and a second amended information, each time challenging the sufficiency and constitutionality of the death-penalty aggravating circumstances alleged by the State. The State in turn filed successive amended informations in partial response to the court’s rulings on a bill of particulars. Collins also filed a motion to suppress and several other pretrial motions, all of which were heard and resolved before trial.
On January 7, 2025 — days before the scheduled January 13 trial — Collins moved for absolute discharge under Nebraska’s speedy trial statute, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 29-1207 (Reissue 2016), arguing that more than six months had elapsed since the filing of the original information on January 8, 2024, without the case being tried. Collins contended that his motions to quash the original information and the second amended information — both of which targeted only the death-penalty aggravating circumstances — were not excludable pretrial motions under § 29-1207(4)(a) because aggravating circumstances are not elements of a charged crime. He relied heavily on State v. Covey, 267 Neb. 210 (2004), which held that a motion captioned “Motion to Quash Death Penalty” that by its own terms was not to be heard until after a conviction was not an excludable pretrial motion.
The district court denied discharge, finding 195 days of excludable time attributable to five distinct periods of defense-caused delay — including the continuances associated with all three motions to quash and the motion to suppress — which extended the speedy trial deadline to January 19, 2025. Collins appealed, and the State cross-appealed certain rulings below. The Nebraska Supreme Court granted bypass of the Court of Appeals to address the Covey dispute.
The Court’s Holding
The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s denial of the motion for absolute discharge. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Freudenberg held that all three of Collins’ motions to quash were, in both form and substance, pretrial motions whose filing-to-disposition periods were excludable under § 29-1207(4)(a). The court distinguished State v. Covey on its facts: the motion in Covey expressly stated it was not to be taken up until after a conviction, and the trial court never addressed it before trial, meaning it had no bearing whatsoever on the preparation for or commencement of trial. Collins’ motions, by contrast, were set for evidentiary hearings before trial, were actually decided by the district court before trial, and involved challenges — including constitutional ones — to aggravating circumstances that Nebraska law now requires to be alleged in the information and submitted to the jury.
The court reasoned that because aggravating circumstances must be set forth in the charging instrument and are appropriately challenged by a motion to quash, Collins’ motions were genuine motions to quash within the meaning of § 29-1207(4)(a), not merely disguised post-conviction motions as in Covey. The court also reaffirmed its post-Covey teaching from State v. Coomes, 309 Neb. 749 (2021), that a “period of delay” under the statute is synonymous with a “period of time” between filing and final disposition of a motion, and that excludable periods run automatically regardless of whether they actually postponed the trial date. Applying these principles, the court calculated that the combined excluded periods rendered Collins’ motion for discharge premature.
Although the court’s own calculation of specific excluded periods differed somewhat from the district court’s, the bottom line was the same: the total excludable time extended the speedy trial deadline beyond the date Collins filed his motion for discharge, making absolute discharge unwarranted. The court therefore affirmed the denial of discharge on independent grounds, consistent with its obligation on questions of law.
Key Takeaways
- A motion to quash aggravating circumstances in a capital information is an excludable pretrial motion under § 29-1207(4)(a) when the court actually sets it for hearing and decides it before trial — State v. Covey does not categorically exempt death-penalty-related motions to quash from the speedy trial exclusion.
- State v. Covey is limited to its unusual facts: a motion that expressly reserved its substance for post-conviction proceedings and that the trial court declined to address before trial created no excludable “period of delay” because it had no bearing on the preparation for or commencement of trial.
- Under Nebraska law, aggravating circumstances in a capital case must now be alleged in the information; a facial challenge to those allegations is the proper subject of a motion to quash, and the filing-to-final-disposition period of such a motion is excludable under § 29-1207(4)(a).
- A “period of delay” under § 29-1207(4)(a) runs from the day after a pretrial motion is filed through the date the court grants or denies it — not the date of a subsequent journal entry memorializing the ruling — and overlapping State-caused delays do not negate the exclusion.
- An accused cannot benefit from delay attributable to his own motions or requests for continuances; defense counsel’s representations to the court that a pending motion would toll the speedy trial clock supported exclusion of the relevant period.
Why It Matters
This decision provides important clarity for capital practitioners in Nebraska. By confining Covey to its peculiar facts — a motion expressly deferred to the post-conviction phase — the court confirms that substantive, pre-trial motions challenging aggravating circumstances in the charging document will toll the statutory speedy trial clock, even when those challenges are framed in constitutional terms. Defense attorneys handling capital cases must account for each such motion in their speedy trial calculations from the moment the motion is filed.
More broadly, the opinion reinforces that Nebraska’s speedy trial exclusions are calculated mechanically from filing to final disposition of each pretrial motion, without regard to whether the motions actually caused the trial to be postponed. Prosecutors and defense counsel alike should carefully track the start and end dates of every pretrial motion, because the court’s independent de novo review on appeal may yield exclusion periods that differ from those identified at the trial level — potentially in either party’s favor.