two thousand and one that's more than forty two months or one thousand two hundred forty nine days throughout this time mr quinn's requests for speedy trial were ignored by the court by the prosecutor and even by his own defense counsel who collectively approved and requested twenty eight continuances with no justification for them no acknowledgement even considered mr o'quinn speedy trial requests and nothing in the case filed to suggest anything was going on to move the case toward trial during this three and a half year period if the sixth amendment is to mean anything it must mean the mr quinn's rights here were violated the state court decision rejecting mr o'quinn speedy trial defense and reasonably apply clearly established federal law under ed and was also based on unreasonable germination of facts the controlling supreme court precedent in this case in parker vs window and the various cases interpreted that as the court surely knows the barker vs window has a four factor test that looks at the length of the delay  between indictment trials the reason for the delay the defendant's assertion of his rights and the prejudice to the defendant the state courts erroneous and alice s affected at least three of those four second looking at the reason for the delay even if there is no clearly established federal law as issued by the supreme court they can completely shift blame to the government here or to the state it is it is clear and it was clear at the time the state court issued  it noted that mr quinn asserted his rights that's correct but didn't do is under this reason or the whose fault it was factor didn't factor that in at all and going back to barker talks about a continuum on one hand you have if the government is intentionally delaying a trial to prejudice the the defendant that swayed obviously very heavily against the government more towards the middle you have the government's negligence or unwillingness to push the case forward it's still way to get the government but it's not weighted strongly on the far other hand you have a case where the defense counsel or the defendant is actively sabotaging his case like the vermont vs brylin case where the defend is threatening to attack his attorney moving to dismiss is attorney immediately before trial things like that but the ben parker court also acknowledged that in between that there is this area where this factor is weighed less against the defendant if she she's not aware that the defense counsel is making these continuances or delaying trial he's not doing it in coordination with them here we go even further than that from barker where he was actively working against his client's wishes so if the defense counsel defendants not knowing about the contents of that how do we know there are so that we have to pro filings right that's correct your honor and we don't have a i mean hearing on those fun we have nothing all that's in the record from you shortly before trial you from from shortly after the arrest really before trial are twenty eight continuances and mr quin say that all the continuances were at the feet of the defendant the state concedes perhaps five months ago we have a suggestion at least that the majority of those forty two months thirty seven months are attributable to actions of defense counsel i think i think it's undisputed that five months should fall to the state i don't think that's that's but mr o'quinn actually did do a number of other things he filed a complaint with the illinois attorney registration disciplinary commission he he sent pro se discovery request directly to the state into the prosecutor because he concluded i must be representing myself because he says no what what what the record says is through pleading maneuvering and cajoling the of kept the case from trial with the hope of the friend and will not throw the rest of his life away which he is in real danger of doing which we do not lack for trial work we just keep pushing this case off this for what it's worth he said he hadn't spoken to mr hawkins his trial counsel since december ninety seven this is a couple years down the road i have no idea whether knowing whether that's true or not but that's certainly what he said and it's consistent with the state court record which shows no consideration of his repeated requests and the representation of the state court record by defense counsel as these pro se it didn't get into the record again  that process which arguably they'd be very responsible action by defense counsel you get an impatient defendant saying i want i want to go to  may please the court counsel i'm just an attorney general brian mcleish on behalf of the respondent i think the first thing to do here is to to state what claim is on the table and that's only a speedy trial claim there's no ineffective assistance of counsel claim here there's no right to self representation here our claim here and the state appellate court reasonably applied our federal law in holding that if you don't lay is attributable to defendant's counsel it's had new york against hill which said that the decision to ask for a continuance is a matter of trial strategy that's left up to counsel and this is just like the decision to impeach or cross examine the witness the decision to simulate a certain evidence reflects your honor however we do know that counsel was doing things during this time so we know that for one counsel is actually negotiating plea deals because the letters that counsel reference in one of then the state's offers is an open plea to second degree murder which would come with a six to twenty year sentence there's strong reason to believe that at petitioner would have gotten the long end of that sentence then given the nature of his crime the previous indications of child abuse and that was ultimately you know their final offer before trial was a ten year sentence looked at what was his record for to this charge there had been and there had been investigations of child abuse this came out only a sentencing not a trial but there have been investigations of petitioner for child abuse of his own children in the early ninety's and that goes that goes to also one of titian's claims of prejudice is that his his ex because trial counsel is presumed to be acting in client's best interest even if he's not acting with clients wishes as is often the case he's acting in client's best interest and the trial judge is not supposed to be the ar iter of trial strategy so if the if counsel and defendant disagree about trial strategy we don't go to the trial judge and let the trial judge you know make a record of what the strategy is and why and why counsel is choosing a strategy on speedily for trial right they do have that ability mostly the latter it's the government's you know it's the state's obligation to bring the case to trial and what we have here is essentially a claim of state acquiescence and  extremely long delay and i don't know that that's been litigated before which probably for close is this claim under at the but you know let's just deal with it as a matter of first impression this is state court but it's still part of clearly established federal law says that yes the trial court and yes the state have the responsibility to move things along but not when counsel is requesting the continuance is when counsel fails to move the case along as what x case defendant's actions in that case were different however the rule that the supreme court espoused doesn't account for those facts it says that when trial counsel fails to move the case along that can't be attributed to the state unless there's a systemic breakdown in the public system defend system and that makes sense because the state is responsible for funding and making sure that the public defender system is running however once you know counsel is acting in his client's best interest her yes counsels acting in his defect in his client's best interest the state is under no obligation to force trial counsel to try and change its strategy even if trial counsel on the defendant disagree about what the best strategy which is really cliche i'm not sure i disagree with that analysis however what do we do never actually says he wants to represent himself he wants a special attorney so he had to say lots of fire counsel he wants to fire counsel and so if we had ineffective assistance claim that that might be relevant and then we hope and open up another can of worms with the fact there's there's reason to believe that in fact even the dissent in the state court that you know stated that it talks down to was doing a good job however i would caution the court to create a rule where the beast the trial court may be the arbiter of defense's trial strategy and this would be the only situation which i could think of in which the trial court steps in to decide what defense's strategy should be or to evaluate it in any way and make a judgment or force counsel to explain himself about a matter of trial strategy before the thank you ours just a couple points no the state law violation isn't a federal constitutional law violation but it's further evidence that this was not a routine matter of trial strategy this was done just pushing it off and pushing it off and pushing it off without any evidence in the record they were actively preparing for trial