Opinion ID: 195675
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Decision-making Delay

Text: 9 First, Keller claims that an unprecedented eight-year delay between trial and the entry of judgment, coupled with the trial judge's failure to refresh his recollection through recourse to a complete trial transcript prior to making findings of fact, resulted in a violation of his constitutional right to access to the courts and to due process, see U.S. Const. amends. I, V; Ad Hoc Comm. on Judicial Admin. v. Massachusetts, 488 F.2d 1241, 1244 (1st Cir.1973) (noting that pretrial delay might violate constitutional rights if a civil litigant is denied for too long his day in court), cert. denied, 416 U.S. 986, 94 S.Ct. 2389, 40 L.Ed.2d 763 (1974), or in a violation which warrants withholding the customary appellate deference accorded trial court findings. Cf. Chamberlin v. 101 Realty, Inc., 915 F.2d 777, 787 (1st Cir.1990) (excusing two-year delay); Fernberg v. T.F. Boyle Transp., Inc., 889 F.2d 1205, 1209 (1st Cir.1989) (excusing two and one-half year delay). Keller attributes the purported generality in the district court findings, see infra Section II.B, to this extended decision-making delay, and implicitly relies on a conclusive presumption that the court was unable to make more complete and detailed findings as it could not recall the evidence presented at trial almost eight years earlier. 10 Keller concedes that neither Chamberlin nor Fernberg concluded that prolonged decision-making delay, per se, requires vacatur. Nor has he cited authority for a per se rule fixing an outer limit on decision-making delay. Cf. Ad Hoc Comm., 488 F.2d at 1244 (rejecting per se rule under Federal Constitution for bounding decision-making delay in state court civil cases); cf. also, Los Angeles County Bar Ass'n v. March Fong Eu, 979 F.2d 697, 705-06 (9th Cir.1992) (conducting ad hoc inquiry to determine whether pretrial delay exceed[ed] constitutional boundaries). 11 There are sound reasons for abjuring a per se rule even in cases involving plainly excessive delay. In the first place, ad hoc appellate scrutiny is indispensable to the core determination whether delay rendered the decision unreliable. Secondly, it is highly doubtful that direct appellate review affords an effective means of enforcing district court timeliness. See Phonetele, Inc. v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., 889 F.2d 224, 232 (9th Cir.1989) (delay approximating four years), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 1283, 117 L.Ed.2d 508 (1992). Thirdly, remands for reconsideration or retrial yield yet further delays, exacerbating the burdens on litigants. For these reasons, and notwithstanding our parallel supervisory responsibility, see, e.g., 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1651 (mandamus jurisdiction); Petition of Henneman, 137 F.2d 627, 630 (1st Cir.1943), we consider it critically important that appellate attention remain focused on ensuring that trial court findings, despite inordinate decision-making delay, not be squandered unless their reliability has been undermined. We therefore opt for careful de novo scrutiny of the entire record with a view to whether the prolonged delay in reaching a decision rendered the trial court's findings of fact unreliable to the degree that vacation of its judgment is warranted despite the admittedly severe impediments to reliable fact-finding in the event of a remand for new trial. Cf. Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 532, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 2193, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972) (long pretrial delays threaten to impair criminal defense, lest witnesses die, disappear, or suffer memory loss or distortion). 12 Notwithstanding the eight-year interval between trial and judgment, for which we have been unable to glean adequate explanation, neither Keller nor the record on appeal suggests that the district court did not perform its decision-making responsibility with care. As Keller's several requests to expedite the decision-making process acknowledge, the district court was in no sense indifferent to its responsibility to render a decision but encountered extraordinary docket pressures at the same time it was required to give precedence to its criminal caseload. See Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3161 (1993). 13 Nor would we well serve the interests of justice, or the integrity of the decision-making process, were we to presume that the absence of a complete trial transcript rendered the district court incapable of determining matters relating to witness demeanor and credibility, or to recollect or reconstruct trial testimony, through other reliable means (viz., trial notes, voluminous trial exhibits). See Keller, No. 81-549-SD, slip op. at 16 (The court in the course of rendering its decision has reviewed all of the exhibits....). After all, the responsibility incumbent on an appellant to substantiate a challenge to the sufficiency of trial court findings is not met merely with conclusory allegations that the trier of fact could not have recalled or reconstructed the evidence without a complete trial transcript. Moreover, this case does not require us to speculate as to the reliability of the trial judge's findings, since a complete trial transcript is available for the purpose. Thus, as regards the claim that the trial judge's findings themselves evince prejudice from the extended decision-making delay, we test Keller's thesis as in any other case, by inquiring whether the findings were infected with clear error based on our own painstaking scrutiny of the entire trial record, including a complete trial transcript. See Interstate Commerce Comm'n v. Holmes Transp., Inc., 983 F.2d 1122, 1129 (1st Cir.1993) (noting that appellate court must defer to trial court fact-finding unless, after reviewing entire record, it is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed).