Opinion ID: 780332
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: District Court's Denial of Gorman's Motion to Dismiss Based on Speedy Trial Violation

Text: 52 The District Court did not err in denying Gorman's motion to dismiss for a violation of the Speedy Trial Act. Gorman's motion to exclude evidence under FED. R. EVID. 404(b) was pending during the entire time between December 29, 2000, and October 19, 2001, when Gorman entered a conditional guilty plea. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(1)(F) that time is excluded from the calculations of the Speedy Trial Act; thus, there was no violation of the Speedy Trial Act. 53 The Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3161 et seq., requires that Gorman's trial commence within 70 days of November 29, 2000, the day he was arraigned. See 18 U.S.C. § 3161(c)(1). The Act sets forth several types of excludable delay that do not count against the 70-day limit, including delay resulting from any pretrial motion, from the filing of the motion through the conclusion of the hearing on ... such motion. 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(1)(F). See Henderson v. United States, 476 U.S. 321, 330, 106 S.Ct. 1871, 90 L.Ed.2d 299 (1986) (holding that Congress intended subsection (F) to exclude ... all time between the filing of a motion and the conclusion of the hearing on that motion, whether or not a delay in holding that hearing is `reasonably necessary.'). 54 Thus, the District Court correctly found that there was no violation of the Speedy Trial Act because Gorman filed a motion to exclude evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts under FED. R. EVID. 404(b) that was pending during the entire time between December 29, 2000, when it was filed, and October 1, 2001, when Gorman moved to dismiss on Speedy Trial grounds. 55 Gorman contends that his pretrial motion to exclude 404(b) evidence is analogous to the motion to dismiss for prosecutorial misconduct in United States v. Clymer, 25 F.3d 824 (9th Cir.1994). In Clymer, instead of conducting an evidentiary hearing and deciding the pretrial motion before trial, the District Court continued the motion to dismiss until after trial. We found that Clymer was not an ordinary case of pretrial delay and that the time between the filing of the motion and the hearing was not excluded because the delay did not result from the pretrial motion when the hearing on the motion would be after trial. Clymer, 25 F.3d at 830, 831. Gorman's argument, however, fails because this Court held that the exception in United States v. Clymer, 25 F.3d 824, 830-31 (9th Cir.1994) (holding that time between filing of pretrial motion and hearing was not excludable) applies only when a motion is decided after trial. United States v. George, 85 F.3d 1433, 1436 (9th Cir.1996) (citing United States v. Springer, 51 F.3d 861, 865 (9th Cir.1995)). Gorman's motion to exclude evidence under FED. R. EVID. 404(b) was scheduled to be decided before trial — not after or even during trial. 56 Nor does Gorman's case fall within one of the qualifications of this broad rule excluding all delay from the filing of a pretrial motion to the hearing on that motion. Clymer, 25 F.3d at 831 n. 6. This is not a case where there were unsuccessful attempts to obtain hearings on the pretrial motions or ... hearings [that] were `deliberately refused with intent to evade the Speedy Trial Act.' Id. (citation omitted). Thus, there was no violation of the Speedy Trial Act.