Opinion ID: 186155
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Time Allotted to Review Jencks Material

Text: 29 With respect to the Jencks material that was provided at the hearing, Stanfield argues that the court abused its discretion in granting his counsel only nine minutes to review what counsel described as a very thick stack of papers. HOV Tr. at 31. The applicable rule provides that [t]he court may recess the proceedings to allow time for a party to examine the statement and prepare for its use. FED.R.CRIM.P. 26.2(d). Stanfield relies primarily on United States v. Hinton, 631 F.2d 769, 782 (D.C.Cir.1980), in which this court held that trial counsel's failure to request the recess to which she was entitled under Rule 26.2(d) deprived the defendant of his right to effective assistance of counsel. Of greater importance to this case — because Stanfield's counsel did request and receive a recess (albeit a short one) — is the Hinton court's statement that if the defense counsel had requested a recess, a refusal by the court to allow sufficient time for review would have been appealable as an abuse of discretion. Id. at 781 (emphasis added). 30 Hinton thus establishes (unremarkably) Stanfield's right to an appeal on this issue, but provides no guidance on how much time would be sufficient to satisfy the abuse-of-discretion standard. For that, Stanfield points to United States v. Holmes, 722 F.2d 37 (4th Cir.1983), in which the Fourth Circuit held that the trial court abused its discretion in allowing the defendant only sixteen minutes to review Jencks material that had been provided to counsel on a Sunday morning one day before the trial began. See id. at 40, 41. [T]he material was a stack of paper at least eight inches thick, including a thousand pages of testimony obtained from ten witnesses, a forty-five minute tape recording and other documents; the court noted that a single reading of the material by an experienced attorney took twenty-four hours. Id. at 40. In holding that the recess was inadequate, the court emphasized that the defendants had only the minimum notice that due process requires of the charges against them, and that their need for time to examine the material was thus greater than in the usual case. Id. at 41. This case is manifestly distinguishable from Holmes. Quite apart from the fact that the volume of material here is smaller — the stack of papers is at most one-quarter the size, and there is no evidence that the material included a lengthy audiotape — this case does not include a notice problem analogous to the one that the Fourth Circuit confronted: the Violation Report provided a detailed explanation of the alleged violations and the facts underlying each of them. Violation Report (Apr. 28, 2003), at 2-4. 31 Rule 26.2(d) compels the district courts to exercise discretion in balancing the need for adequate time to examine Jencks material against the need to avoid undue delay in the midst of a proceeding while a witness is on the stand. The permissive language of the Rule — [t]he court may recess the proceedings (emphasis added) — indicates that district judges have ample latitude in striking that balance. See Sendejas v. United States, 428 F.2d 1040, 1046 (9th Cir.1970) (given that the Jencks Act does not state how much time should be allowed, the trial judge in his discretion has the right to determine how much time is reasonably needed). The district court cannot be required to wait until defense counsel is satisfied that review of the Jencks material is complete; such a procedure would transfer control over the timing of proceedings from the district judge to the defense. The district court must unavoidably draw the line somewhere, and is well equipped to do so. See Palermo, 360 U.S. at 353, 79 S.Ct. at 1225 (decisions on procedural and evidentiary matters should rest within the good sense and experience of the district judge..., and subject to the appropriately limited review of appellate courts). 32 Commentators and practitioners have long been aware that the time allotted for review of Jencks material is often relatively brief. See American Bar Ass'n, Standards for Criminal Justice: Discovery and Trial by Jury, Standard 11.2-1(a) cmt., at 20-21 (3d ed.1996) (Some federal courts have criticized [the timing of Jencks disclosure] as contrary to the interest of justice and the orderly administration of the judicial system). Indeed, complaints about inadequate time for examining Jencks material are nearly as old as the Jencks Act itself. See Junior Bar Section of Bar Ass'n of District of Columbia, Conference Papers on Discovery in Federal Criminal Cases (1963), reprinted in 33 F.R.D. 47 app. at 122 (1963) (noting widespread dissatisfaction with the amount of time afforded to defense counsel to inspect and reflect on the contents of Jencks statements in the midst of a trial). But we note that Stanfield's counsel relied on Shaw's notes of his meetings with Stanfield — which were disclosed after Shaw's direct testimony — on two occasions during cross-examination, see HOV Tr. at 34-35, 39-40, indicating that she was able to use the opportunity to review the material to some advantage. See United States v. Mitchell, 777 F.2d 248, 255 (5th Cir.1985). 33 A district court must avoid undue delay in proceedings, but must also ensure that the right provided by Rule 26.2 is not rendered meaningless by expedition; a prompt proceeding is good but a fair one is necessary, and excessive zeal to minimize delay can be short-sighted, precipitating an appellate challenge that could have been avoided. No one would accuse the district court here of being overly generous in affording counsel time to review the documents produced after Shaw's testimony; indeed, the court flirted with the outer limits of its discretion, but we cannot conclude that it abused that discretion. 3 Given that we are remanding the case for the district court to determine whether defense counsel received all the Jencks material to which she was entitled, however, the district court may want to take the opportunity to review the Jencks material that was produced and reassess whether nine minutes was a sufficient amount of time for Stanfield's counsel to review it. Of course, if the court finds that additional documents should have been produced, and that such error was not harmless, it will have to reassess the amount of time counsel reasonably needs to review all the material she is entitled to see.