Cole County Presiding Circuit Judge Pat Joyce ordered Aaron Fisher's release last Friday because "the State has failed to bring (him) to trial without any reason," she said in a four-page written order released Tuesday.
Miller County Prosecutor Ben Winfrey plans to appeal the case to the state appeals court in Kansas City.
Fisher, now 27, Brumley, was charged Oct. 28, 2009, with two counts of forcible statutory sodomy involving a 5-month-old girl. Conviction of the crime carried a punishment of life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
Fisher's arrest warrant included a note that no bond was to be allowed because officials believed he was a danger to the community.
And he's been held without bond ever since, either in the Miller County Jail or the state prison system since 2011, where he served a four-year sentence on a separate case for causing damage to the county jail.
On Jan. 13, Missouri's Supreme Court assigned Joyce as a special judge to take over Fisher's case after Miller County circuit judges - Stan Moore and Ken Hayden - removed themselves from it.
Joyce's order lists six different times since 2010 when Fisher's case was set for trial, then continued without any trial being held.
After the first continuance, Fisher submitted his own, handwritten "Motion for Speedie Trial," which was received Feb. 22, 2011. The U.S. and Missouri Constitutions protect people's right to a speedy trial, and Joyce noted: "Without the right to a speedy and fair trial, citizens could be held against their will, for excessive amounts of time, without regard to their rights."
Based on Fisher's 2011 motion, she acknowledged Judge Moore had reviewed the motion and reset the trial. On the May 23 trial date, Joyce wrote, "The only continuance requested by the defendant was granted."
Winfrey and former Prosecutor Matt Howard told the News Tribune on Monday that the defense, not the state, made the requests for delaying the trial.
"In this case, there is no delay attributable to the state and there was certainly no attempt by the state to deliberately delay the trial," Winfrey told Joyce in his written motion opposing Public Defender Jason Emmons' motion to dismiss Fisher's case.
Of the half-dozen trial settings and continuances Joyce listed in her order, she noted in the last three, the scheduled jury trial "was stricken without any record or documentation addressing the defendant's right to a speedy trial" or which party sought the continuance in the last two.
After Fisher's February 2011 motion, Joyce wrote: "The former Prosecuting Attorney had five jury trial settings. No record was made to protect or address the rights raised in (Fisher's) motion for a speedy trial.
"The Court cannot conclude that the defendant's right to a speedy trial was considered."
After Winfrey took office in January, Joyce wrote no motion was made to obtain a trial setting until Sept. 9. Her order doesn't include it, but the case docket entries show Joyce scheduled a trial to begin Nov. 23, with a jury to be chosen from Camden County.
However, the public defender filed the motion to dismiss the case a week later - and her order upheld that motion.
Her order also didn't address Winfrey's argument Fisher also scheduled three hearings to enter guilty pleas, two of which were canceled.
The third hearing, in July 2014, resulted in a guilty plea. However, last Nov. 21, that plea was set-aside as though it never occurred.
After that, the Miller County judges stepped away from the case, and Joyce joined it.
Jefferson City lawyer Shane Farrow, a former assistant prosecutor who does a lot of criminal defense work, told the News Tribune in an email he wasn't surprised by Joyce's decision.
"Rarely does a criminal case take six years to resolve, and that is generally because a defendant has fled the jurisdiction where the case is filed," he said. "I have never, in 20 years of practice as a prosecutor and a defense attorney, seen a case last six years when the defendant is in custody."
Joyce's decision was "with prejudice" - which means the state cannot refile the sodomy charges against Fisher, unless the appeals court in Kansas City or the state Supreme Court overrule Joyce's ruling.