FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

PHILIP LAYFIELD, AKA Philip 

Samuel Pesin, 

Defendant-Appellant.

Nos. 22-50047 

22-50133

D.C. No. 

2:18-cr-00124-

MWF-1 

 

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Michael W. Fitzgerald, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 16, 2024

Pasadena, California

Filed March 7, 2024

Before: Richard C. Tallman, Sandra S. Ikuta, and John B. 

Owens, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Owens
2 UNITED STATES V. LAYFIELD

SUMMARY*

Criminal Law

Affirming Philip James Layfield’s convictions for wire 

fraud, mail fraud, and various tax offenses, the panel rejected 

Layfield’s argument that that the twenty-one days it took the 

U.S. Marshals Service to transport him from the District of 

New Jersey (where agents arrested him) to the Central 

District of California (CDCA) (where the grand jury indicted 

him) should have triggered a Speedy Trial Act violation.

Layfield argued that, properly accounting for the 

transportation delay, the government did not bring him to 

trial within the seventy-day limit set forth in 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3161(c)(1).

Section 3161(c)(1) provides that the seventy-day clock 

is triggered by the public filing of the indictment or the first 

appearance before a judge of the court in which the charge 

is pending, whichever date last occurs.

Layfield’s first appearance before a judge in the CDCA, 

which occurred fourteen days after the public filing of his 

indictment, triggered the seventy-day clock. The panel held 

that a plain reading of § 3161(c)(1) dictates that the twentyone-day delay between Layfield’s detention in New Jersey 

and his first appearance before a judge in the CDCA was 

immaterial to the Speedy Trial Act analysis.

The panel rejected Layfield’s argument that because he 

was detained, a different provision becomes 

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has 

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
UNITED STATES V. LAYFIELD 3

relevant. Section 3161(h)(1)(F) provides that, in calculating 

the seventy days, a “delay resulting from transportation of 

any defendant from another district . . . in excess of ten days 

. . . shall be presumed to be unreasonable.” The panel 

explained that this provision applies to prisoners travelling 

between jurisdictions for court proceedings once the 

seventy-day clock has started—not to a pre-indictment or 

pre-appearance transfer.

The panel addressed Layfield’s other challenges to some 

of his convictions in a concurrently filed memorandum 

disposition.

COUNSEL

Katherine K. Windsor (argued), Law Office of Katherine 

Kimball Windsor, Pasadena, California, for DefendantAppellant.

Mark Aveis (argued), Ian V. Yanniello, and Carolyn S. 

Small, Assistant United States Attorneys; Bram M. Alden, 

Assistant United States Attorney, Criminal Appeals Section 

Chief; E. Martin Estrada, United States Attorney; United 

States Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, Los 

Angeles, California; for Plaintiff-Appellee.
4 UNITED STATES V. LAYFIELD

OPINION

OWENS, Circuit Judge:

Philip James Layfield appeals from his convictions for 

wire fraud, mail fraud, and various tax offenses. He argues 

that the twenty-one days it took the U.S. Marshals Service to 

transport him from the District of New Jersey (where agents 

arrested him) to the Central District of California (where the 

grand jury indicted him) should have triggered a Speedy 

Trial Act violation and requires this court to overturn all of 

his convictions. Consistent with our own precedent and that 

of the First and Second Circuits, we reject his challenge and 

affirm.1

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Crime and Court Appearances

To make a long story short, Layfield was a crooked 

plaintiff’s lawyer and certified public accountant with 

operations in Los Angeles and elsewhere. He routinely (and 

illegally) used client settlements to cover his personal 

expenses as well as his firm’s operating expenses to the tune 

of millions of dollars commingled and stolen, and eventually 

moved to Costa Rica—at which point his client trust account 

was down to $134. 

Speedy Trial Act cases often turn on specific dates, so 

the key events are listed in bullet form below for ease of the 

reader.

1 Layfield also individually challenges some of his wire fraud and tax 

convictions. We address those claims in a concurrently filed 

memorandum disposition, in which we also affirm. 
UNITED STATES V. LAYFIELD 5

• February 23, 2018: A complaint in the Central District 

of California (CDCA) charged Layfield with one count 

of mail fraud for defrauding a client and misusing the 

client’s settlement funds. 

• February 24, 2018: Agents arrested Layfield on the Los 

Angeles arrest warrant at the Newark International 

Airport while he was boarding a flight to Costa Rica. 

• February 26, 2018: Layfield made his first appearance 

in the District of New Jersey, and the magistrate judge 

continued his bail hearing. 

• March 2, 2018: The magistrate judge denied bail and 

ordered Layfield removed to the CDCA. 

• March 9, 2018: A CDCA grand jury returned an 

indictment against Layfield.2 

• March 23, 2018: Layfield made his first appearance 

before a judge in the CDCA. 

B. The District Court Rejected Layfield’s Speedy 

Trial Act Argument

Before the district court Layfield contended that the 

transportation delay between his detention in the District of 

New Jersey and his initial appearance in the CDCA should 

have counted towards the seventy-day limit of the Speedy 

Trial Act. 18 U.S.C. § 3161(c)(1) (providing that a trial 

“shall commence within seventy days from” certain 

specified dates). Layfield argued that, properly accounting 

for that transportation delay, the government did not bring 

him to trial within the seventy-day limit and, therefore, 

2 In November 2018, a grand jury returned a twenty-eight-count 

superseding indictment. 
6 UNITED STATES V. LAYFIELD

dismissal of the indictment was required. Ruling from the 

bench, the district court relied on cases cited by the 

government—United States v. Palomba, 31 F.3d 1456 (9th 

Cir. 1994), and United States v. Munoz-Amado, 182 F.3d 57 

(1st Cir. 1999), among others. The district court explained 

that there are “no cases that say that the remedy for this 

violation is to shove that time into the 70 days.” Layfield’s 

argument, moreover, ignored the “universal 

understanding . . . of when the 70 days began to run,” which 

“is supported by Ninth Circuit law,” holding that the 

triggering date is the date of the defendant’s initial 

appearance in the charging district.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Standard of Review and Jurisdiction

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We 

review a district court’s interpretation of the Speedy Trial 

Act de novo. United States v. Orozco-Barron, 72 F.4th 945, 

954 (9th Cir. 2023). 

B. There Was No Speedy Trial Act Violation

The Speedy Trial Act of 1974, 18 U.S.C. § 3161 et seq., 

provides: 

In any case in which a plea of not guilty 

is entered, the trial of a defendant charged in 

an information or indictment with the 

commission of an offense shall commence 

within seventy days from the filing date (and 

making public) of the information or 

indictment, or from the date the defendant 

has appeared before a judicial officer of the 
UNITED STATES V. LAYFIELD 7

court in which such charge is pending, 

whichever date last occurs.

§ 3161(c)(1). In calculating that seventy-day period, the 

Speedy Trial Act excludes certain “periods of delay” listed 

in § 3161(h). “If a defendant is not brought to trial within 

the time limit required by section 3161(c) as extended by 

section 3161(h),” then the indictment must be dismissed. Id.

§ 3162(a)(2). 

Under the clear language of § 3161(c)(1), only two 

events could trigger Layfield’s seventy-day speedy trial 

clock: (1) the March 9, 2018 public filing of the indictment 

or (2) his March 23, 2018 first appearance before a judge in 

the CDCA. And because his CDCA appearance was the 

latter date, it triggered the seventy-day clock. This plain 

reading of § 3161(c)(1) dictates that the twenty-one-day 

delay between his detention in New Jersey and his first 

appearance in the CDCA was immaterial to the Speedy Trial

Act analysis. 

On multiple occasions, the Ninth Circuit has confirmed 

that this straightforward interpretation of § 3161(c)(1) is 

correct. For example, in Palomba, the defendant argued that 

his initial appearance in the CDCA should have triggered the 

seventy-day period under the Speedy Trial Act, even though 

he faced charges in the Northern District of California. 31 

F.3d at 1462. We rejected that argument, as it “overlooks 

the fact that the 70-day period commences only on the date 

when the defendant is brought before a ‘judicial officer of 

the court in which the matter is pending.’” Id. (quoting 

§ 3161(c)); see also United States v. Wilson, 720 F.2d 608, 

609 (9th Cir. 1983) (rejecting identical argument as 

“difficult to square with the language of Section 

3161(c)(1)”).
8 UNITED STATES V. LAYFIELD

Layfield does not fight the clear holdings of Palomba

and Wilson. Instead, he contends that those cases featured 

defendants out on bond, and not detained like he was after 

his initial New Jersey appearance. Because he was detained, 

the argument goes, a different provision becomes relevant—

§ 3161(h)(1)(F), which provides that, in calculating the 

seventy days, a “delay resulting from transportation of any 

defendant from another district . . . in excess of ten days . . . 

shall be presumed to be unreasonable.”3 And because the 

delay between his detention in New Jersey and his first 

appearance in the CDCA was twenty-one days—exceeding 

the ten days referenced above—presumably eleven of those 

days should count against the seventy-day period.4 

This is not a new argument, nor is it a winning one. For 

example, in United States v. Barnes, 159 F.3d 4, 10 (1st Cir. 

1998), the First Circuit rejected an identical contention: “The 

pre-indictment or pre-appearance transfer of a defendant is 

not explicitly listed as one of the only two triggering events 

in section 3161(c)(1), and we decline to read into that 

provision what was not expressly included by Congress. 

Accordingly, . . . [the delay in transfer] does not start the 70-

day speedy trial clock.” See also Munoz-Amado, 182 F.3d 

at 60 (applying Barnes to a defendant held in custody during 

transport to the charging district); United States v. Lynch, 

726 F.3d 346, 353 (2nd Cir. 2013) (rejecting the view that 

“the limitation on the exclusion of travel time of a defendant 

3 Prior to 2008, § 3161(h)(1)(F) was numbered as (h)(1)(H). See Judicial 

Administration and Technical Amendments Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 

110-406, § 13, 122 Stat. 4291, 4294.

4 In United States v. Greene, 783 F.2d 1364, 1368 (9th Cir. 1986), we

appear to have faced this very issue—the interaction between 

§ 3161(c)(1) and (h)(1)(F) [then (H)]—but we ultimately did not need to 

resolve it.
UNITED STATES V. LAYFIELD 9

in § 3161(h)(1)(F) applies to the seventy-day period of 

§ 3161(c)(1)”); cf. United States v. Wickham, 30 F.3d 1252, 

1254-55 (9th Cir. 1994) (adhering to the statute’s “plain 

meaning” in rejecting the argument that § 3161(i) 

“replace[s] section 3161(c)(1) when a defendant withdraws 

a guilty plea”). 

According to Layfield, this interpretation effectively 

reads § 3161(h)(1)(F) out of the criminal code. Not so. That

subsection readily applies when a prisoner, after 

§ 3161(c)(1) is triggered, is transferred between districts for 

separate trial proceedings. For example, the defendant may 

be subject to detainers lodged by other districts where 

charges are also pending against them. The first ten days of 

that travel are deemed reasonable. Days exceeding those ten 

are not. See Barnes, 159 F.3d at 10 (describing 

§ 3161(h)(1)(F) [then (H)] as “a tolling provision, not one 

that sets forth the events that trigger the start of the 70-day 

period”). Courts apply this provision to prisoners travelling 

between different jurisdictions for court proceedings once 

the seventy-day clock has started—not to defendants in 

Layfield’s procedural posture. See, e.g., United States v. 

Nash, 946 F.2d 679, 680 (9th Cir. 1991) (applying section 

(h)(1)(F) [then (H)] to transportation between state 

institution and federal custody); United States v. Collins, 90 

F.3d 1420, 1427 (9th Cir. 1996) (applying section (h)(1)(F)

[then (H)] to travel to and from state court proceedings); 

United States v. Robertson, 810 F.2d 254, 259-60 (D.C. Cir. 

1987) (applying section (h)(1)(F) [then (H)] to travel from 

Wisconsin to the District of Columbia for trial and back). 

That section (h)(1)(F) does not apply to Layfield does not 

render it meaningless to others. 

Layfield cites one out-of-circuit district court case—

United States v. Thompson, No. 6:06-CR-228-ORL-18KRS, 
10 UNITED STATES V. LAYFIELD

2007 WL 1222573, at *1-2 (M.D. Fla. Apr. 24, 2007)—to 

buttress his argument. The judge in that case, apparently 

frustrated that the government made no effort to explain a 

three-month delay in transporting the defendant, ruled that 

the speedy trial clock began with the order of removal. Id. 

The court neither cited nor distinguished any authority but 

reasoned that “[t]o hold otherwise would render the relevant 

tolling provision, § 3161(h)(1)([F]), largely useless in 

situations such as this one, where the Order of Removal . . . 

was either ignored or forgotten about.” Id. at *2. Thompson 

holds limited, if any, value: no court has ever relied on it,

and, by contrast, Layfield’s order of removal was not 

ignored.

Layfield also argues that the prevailing reading of 

§ 3161(c)(1) means that a defendant could spend months or 

even years awaiting transport to the charging district without 

any avenue of relief. Again, not so. The Supreme Court 

outlined the procedure for challenging pretrial delay more 

than fifty years ago in Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 530 

(1972) (explaining that speedy trial cases require a balancing 

test applied “on an ad hoc basis”). And while the facts of 

this case do not merit such relief, the more egregious 

hypothetical scenarios that Layfield outlines might. 

III. CONCLUSION

Based on the clear language of § 3161(c)(1) and 

consistent with our own precedent and that of the First and 

Second Circuits, we reject Layfield’s Speedy Trial Act 

challenge. 

AFFIRMED.