Opinion ID: 2317323
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The plain facts are:

Text:  Appellant was incarcerated in the D.C. Jail, unable to make a $2,500 bond, for the 25 months between arrest and trial. No other charges were pending, and appellant was not serving time for another offense. (A parole detainer relating to a previous conviction was lodged solely because of appellant's arrest in this case; it was lifted 13 months after arrest.)  Appellant persistently asserted his speedy trial rights, beginning 10 months after his arrest (seven months after indictment).  Although appellant filed a motion to suppress his confession within a month after his indictment, the trial court elected not to hear it for 10 months until trial was set to begin and appellant had been incarcerated for 14 months.  The court granted appellant's motion to suppress, triggering a government appeal to this court. The government subsequently moved to withdraw the appeal but waited five and a half months to do so after receiving the transcript of the suppression hearing. The total time required to note and withdraw the appeal was seven months. Trial did not begin for another four months.  Once appellant had alerted the trial court and the prosecutor to his speedy trial concerns after 10 months had elapsed without progress  and four months remained before the scheduled hearing on the suppression motion  both the court and the prosecutor confronted an obvious Sixth Amendment problem: how to avoid unnecessary delay if the court were to grant defendant's motion to suppress, and the government were to note an appeal, while the defendant remained incarcerated. Presumably, the trial court could (and I believe should) have advanced the date of the suppression hearing. Alternatively, once the later-scheduled hearing took place and, as a consequence, the government's appeal went forward, the court could have granted appellant's motion to reduce bond (since the parole detainer by then had been lifted), in order to eliminate prejudicial incarceration from the anticipated delay. In any event, the prosecutor could have expedited the government's appeal. None of these happened. Indeed, the seven-month process from suppression hearing to withdrawal of the government's appeal took much too long. If properly expedited, this process should have taken no more than three months, for by the majority's own calculation, ante at 1096-1097, the government unaccountably delayed its appeal decision, after receiving the suppression hearing transcript, for at least four months. Accordingly, depending on whether the court should have advanced the date of the suppression hearing, the case should have been cleared for trial approximately 13 to 17 months after arrest.  Finally, once the government moved to withdraw its appeal, the trial court promptly held a status hearing, even before this court's mandate had issued. At that time, appellant again asserted his Sixth Amendment right. The trial court, however, deferred trial for another four months. One month should have sufficed. Thus, trial should have begun 14 to 18 months, not 25 months, after arrest. The unjustified delay while appellant remained incarcerated on the present charges alone  having persistently asserted his speedy trial rights beginning 10 months after arrest  violated the Sixth Amendment.