Mathias, J.
Indiana Criminal Rule 4(C) places an affirmative duty on the State to bring a criminal defendant to trial within an aggregate total of 365 days after the later of the defendant being charged or arrested. Those days need not be consecutive and, indeed, delays often happen due to the defendant’s own acts, which are excluded from the 365-day rule. However, historically, our trial courts have not been required to designate a delay on the record as attributable to one of the parties, which left records unclear with respect to determining the remaining days under Rule 4(C). That lack of clarity, coupled with the State’s affirmative duty, frustrated Rule 4(C)’s purpose of furthering the speedy-trial rights of defendants and made the accuracy of appellate review of Rule 4(C) decisions difficult.
Effective January 1, 2024, the Indiana Supreme Court amended the Indiana Criminal Rules to include a new provision as Criminal Rule 4.1(A)(4). That provision states: “When granting or ordering a continuance, the court must designate whether the delay is excluded from the Rule 4 time period due to the act of the defendant, court congestion, or emergency.” Ind. Criminal Rule 4.1(A)(4) (2024). And, by implication, if the trial court does not designate that the delay is excluded, then the delay is not excluded. See id. Rule 4.1(A)(4) is intended to enhance the record’s clarity in the designation of delays by not having those designations be determined in the first instance through Rule 4 filings made well after the fact of a delay. That clarity, in turn, enables the parties to anticipate when key procedural events will occur or will need to occur, such as preserving a motion for dismissal under Rule 4(C) for appellate review, and furthers Rule 4’s essential purpose of giving effect to our constitutional speedy-trial provisions.
We thus conclude, as a matter of first impression, that Rule 4.1(A)(4)’s mandate on our trial courts imposes a corresponding duty on the parties to timely object, with a specifically stated ground, to the trial court’s designation of a delay under that Rule in order to preserve appellate review over whether the court’s designation was correct. A timely and specific objection provides the trial court with the opportunity to cure any error and furthers Rule 4.1(A)(4)’s purpose of ensuring that the record is clear, accurate, and can be relied upon going forward. In the absence of such an objection, the correctness of the trial court’s designation is not preserved for appellate review. We emphasize that the duty to object to purportedly erroneous designations of delays in accordance with Rule 4.1(A)(4) is about ensuring the correctness of the court’s records; it neither alters the State’s affirmative duty to bring a defendant to trial within 365 days under Rule 4(C), nor does it impose an obligation on the defendant to remind the State or the court of the State’s duty.
Here, Barry D’Marlo Billingsley appeals his conviction for murder. Billingsley raises two issues for our review, which we restate as follows: 1. Whether the trial court erred when it denied his Rule 4(C) motion for dismissal. 2. Whether the trial court abused its discretion in the admission of certain evidence.
We affirm.
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Significantly, prior to January 1, 2024, our trial courts had no affirmative obligation under Criminal Rule 4 to designate on the record when delays in holding the defendant’s trial were caused by the defendant and, therefore, excluded from Rule 4(C)’s one-year time period. See Crim. R. 4(C) (2023). Further, our Supreme Court’s case law made clear that, when the trial court had designated delays as being due to court congestion, the parties could argue the correctness of the trial court’s determinations for the first time in their Rule 4(C) filings. See, e.g., S.L. v. State, 16 N.E.3d 953, 959 (Ind. 2014) (defendant filed a February 5, 2013, motion under Rule 4(C) that challenged the trial court’s finding of court congestion on January 30, 2012); see also Clark v. State, 659 N.E.2d 548, 551 (Ind. 1995) (defendant filed a March 29, 1993, motion under Criminal Rule 4(B)(1) that challenged the trial court’s finding of court congestion on January 7, 1993).
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By way of an amendment effective on January 1, 2024, our Supreme Court has attempted to remediate those problems by adding a new provision to Criminal Rule 4 as Criminal Rule 4.1(A)(4). That provision states: “When granting or ordering a continuance, the court must designate whether the delay is excluded from the Rule 4 time period due to the act of the defendant, court congestion, or emergency.” Crim. R. 4.1(A)(4) (2024) (emphasis added). We believe the purpose of requiring our trial courts to designate, on the record at the time a continuance is entered, whether the delay is excluded from the Rule 4 time period due to an act of the defendant is obvious. That language is intended to create clarity, accuracy, and reliability in trial court records for the parties and reviewing courts to calculate the Rule 4 time periods. And, in doing so, Rule 4.1(A)(4) seeks to reduce having Rule 4 operate as a guessing game and to orient the Rule back toward its most essential purpose: “to provide functionality to a criminal defendant’s fundamental and constitutionally protected right to a speedy trial.” Austin, 997 N.E.2d at 1037.
It is therefore logical to conclude that Rule 4.1(A)(4) carries with it a corresponding duty on the parties to timely object in the trial court, with a specifically stated ground, to allegedly erroneous designations made by the court under that Rule. Again, the purpose of Rule 4.1(A)(4) is to enhance the functionality of Criminal Rule 4 by way of ensuring that the record is clear, accurate, and reliable throughout the trial proceedings. A timely and specific objection to an allegedly erroneous designation provides the trial court with the opportunity to cure any error and, thus, furthers the Rule’s purpose. Allowing the parties to disregard the trial court’s affirmative and required Rule 4.1(A)(4) designations at the time they are made and instead challenge them for the first time well after the fact by way of Rule 4 filings would frustrate Rule 4.1(A)(4)’s purpose of enhancing the functionality of Criminal Rule 4.
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We emphasize that our conclusion that Criminal Rule 4.1(A)(4) requires the parties to timely and specifically object to allegedly erroneous designations is not, strictly speaking, a conclusion under Rule 4 itself. If our Supreme Court were to repeal Rule 4.1(A)(4), for example, the standing precedents under Rule 4(C) regarding objections, and the lack thereof, would continue to control. The duty to object to purportedly erroneous designations of delays in accordance with Rule 4.1(A)(4) is about ensuring the correctness of the trial court’s records; it does not alter the State’s affirmative duty to bring a defendant to trial within 365 days under Rule 4(C), nor does it impose an obligation on the defendant to remind the State or the court of the State’s duty.
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On November 14, 2023, Billingsley moved to continue his December 11 trial date due to his counsel having a scheduling conflict with another trial. In his motion, Billingsley acknowledged that “the delay in the proceedings” would be “chargeable to [him] pursuant to Indiana Criminal Rule 4.” Appellant’s App. Vol. 3, p. 51. The court granted the request and set the matter for a status hearing on January 19, 2024. Accordingly, from July 28, 2023, through the end of the 2023 calendar year, all delays in holding Billingsley’s trial were attributable to him and excluded from the State’s Rule 4(C) obligation. Thus, as 2023 rolled over into 2024, the State had 112 days remaining in which to hold Billingsley’s trial.
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If our review of this record were only under Rule 4(C), and had Billingsley requested transcripts that proved his point, Billingsley’s argument would not have been without merit. But this record is not simply a recitation of events out of which we must divine an allocation of Rule 4(C) time. Our record is also a Rule 4.1(A)(4) record that expressly states how the trial court was counting the Rule 4(C) time from January 1, 2024, forward. And, under Rule 4.1(A)(4), if Billingsley believed the trial court’s designations of delays to him were incorrect when the trial court made them on the record, it was his duty to timely and specifically object to those designations and give the trial court the opportunity to cure any error. As he did not do so, we conclude that he has not shown a Rule 4(C) error, and we affirm the trial court’s denial of his motion to dismiss.
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Applying that test here, we conclude that the probable impact of the cash and Billingsley’s refusal to submit to a buccal swab on the jury’s verdict was minor based on the totality of the record, and our confidence in the jury’s verdict is not undermined by any error in the admission of that evidence. Accordingly, any error in the trial court’s admission of that evidence is not reversible error.
For all of these reasons, we affirm Billingsley’s conviction for murder.
Affirmed.
May, J., concurs.
Felix, J., concurs in part and concurs in result with a separate opinion.
Felix, J., concurring and concurring in result.
I fully concur in Issue 2, and I concur in result as to Issue 1 but respectfully disagree with a portion of the majority’s analysis. Before reaching that disagreement, I first note a point of agreement: decisions concerning to whom a Criminal Rule 4 delay should be attributed should be made at the time the continuance is entered. Ante at ¶ 30. On this front, I write separately to emphasize that our review of such a decision should be likewise limited to the record available to the trial court at the time it made that decision. See ante at ¶¶ 36–49, 51–62; Heitz v. State, 263 N.E.3d 181, 196–98 (Ind. Ct. App. 2025) (Felix, J., dissenting) (analyzing disputed Criminal Rule 4 delay attribution in context of only the record available at the time the continuance was entered), trans. not sought. We should not view the record “holistically” such that we use later proceedings to inform our analysis of previously granted continuances. Heitz, 263 N.E.3d at 194 (analyzing disputed Criminal Rule 4 delay attribution by reference to proceedings that post-dated that continuance).
I respectfully disagree with the majority’s holding that if the trial court grants a continuance but does not designate that the resulting delay is excluded from the Criminal Rule 4 time period due to the act of the defendant, court congestion, or emergency, then the delay is not excluded. See ante at ¶¶ 2, 60. Criminal Rule 4.1(A)(4) does not create such a presumption, implication, or default setting. Instead, if a trial court grants a continuance but fails to comply with Criminal Rule 4.1(A)(4)’s designation requirement, then when a Criminal Rule 4 motion to dismiss is filed, the trial court must review the record to determine who requested the continuance, what caused the continuance, and any other relevant facts. See Bradley v. State, 248 N.E.3d 563, 567 (Ind. 2024) (citing Austin v. State, 997 N.E.2d 1027, 1039 (Ind. 2013)) (explaining Criminal Rule 4 decisions depend on “the facts and circumstances of the particular case”). Similarly, on appeal, this court should—as it always has—review the record and facts surrounding the trial court’s decision to grant the continuance. See id. (citing Austin, 997 N.E.2d at 1039). To be clear, I disagree with the majority’s belief that the Criminal Rule 4.1(A)(4) has “by implication” a requirement that a delay not be excluded whenever a court forgets or fails to attribute the delay as required by the rule. Such an implication would render Criminal Rule 4 a “technical means to avoid trial.” Grimes v. State, 235 N.E.3d 1224, 1230 (Ind. 2024) (quoting Cundiff v. State, 967 N.E.2d 1026, 1028 (Ind. 2012)).
Here, Billingsley’s October 21, 2024, written continuance motion, see ante at ¶ 59, was based solely on the State’s untimely discovery response, which it provided more than one year after the October 6, 2023, deadline. Billingsley specifically requested the trial court “attribute the continuance [of the jury trial] to the State.” Appellant’s App. Vol. II at 149. Although Billingsley did not request a transcript of the October 21 hearing for our Court to review, there is no indication in the trial court’s CCS entry regarding that hearing that Billingsley relented this position. On this record—where the trial court routinely followed Criminal Rule 4.1(A)(4)’s designation requirement and Billingsley requested a continuance based on the State’s late-filed discovery—it is clear that the delay in trial was because of that late-filed discovery. Here, Billingsley’s October 21, 2024, written continuance motion, see ante at ¶ 59, was based solely on the State’s untimely discovery response, which it provided more than one year after the October 6, 2023, deadline. Billingsley specifically requested the trial court “attribute the continuance [of the jury trial] to the State.” Appellant’s App. Vol. II at 149. Although Billingsley did not request a transcript of the October 21 hearing for our Court to review, there is no indication in the trial court’s CCS entry regarding that hearing that Billingsley relented this position. On this record—where the trial court routinely followed Criminal Rule 4.1(A)(4)’s designation requirement and Billingsley requested a continuance based on the State’s late-filed discovery—it is clear that the delay in trial was because of that late-filed discovery.