Opinion ID: 6496688
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Analysis of Specific Speedy Trial Act Findings

Text: We first assess whether the district court’s on-the-record findings were sufficient to exclude time for specific adjournments granted. As reflected in the above summary, often, the district court perfunctorily excluded time without 33 explanation. This clearly does not satisfy the Speedy Trial Act’s requirement that a court must “set forth . . . its reasons for finding that the ends of justice are served and they outweigh other interests.” See Zedner, 547 U.S. at 506. Occasionally, the Court referred back to the original designation of this case as complex, but we conclude that these brief, retrospective statements also fail to justify the delays here under the Speedy Trial Act, particularly because the court failed ever to explain on the record why the case was complex. In United States v. Zedner, another case arising from the Eastern District of New York, the Supreme Court stated that “there can be no exclusion” based on the complexity of a case “without on-the-record findings” supporting such a designation under 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(7). 547 U.S. at 507. The Court rejected the practice of justifying an exclusion with only a “passing reference to the case’s complexity.” Id. But that proscribed practice is just what the district Court did here: the Court called the case “complex” without elaborating on the source or implications of that purported complexity. App’x at 88, 98, 478–79, 530, 948. While counsel for the Government at times tried to flesh out the record and demonstrate the complexity of the case due to the ongoing discovery issues, they did so by pointing to the difficulties attendant on their partner agencies’ document 34 production. The Government’s representations regarding the discovery delays in this case, do not satisfy the district court’s Speedy Trial Act obligation to state its justifications for the interests-of-justice determination on the record. Zedner, 547 U.S. at 507; United States v. Bert, 814 F.3d 70, 80 (2d Cir. 2016) (“The [Speedy Trial] Act controls the conduct of the parties and the court itself during criminal pretrial proceedings. Not only must the court police the behavior of the prosecutor and the defense counsel, it must also police itself.”). We decline to infer the district court’s reasoning from the Government’s statements. Relying heavily on United States v. Bikundi, a case from another Circuit, the Government urges us to conclude that a review of the record as a whole, including the Government’s statements and the parties’ back-and-forth regarding the discovery production, satisfies the Speedy Trial Act’s requirements. 926 F.3d 761 (D.C. Cir. 2019). We agree with Bikundi that to maintain a complexity designation, a district court need not “repeat all of the details of its findings on the record each time it grants an ends-of-justice continuance,” if the district court “thorough[ly]” set forth its reasons when initially designating the case as complex and if “the circumstances [justifying the complexity designation remain] essentially unchanged.” Id. at 777–78. Here, however, the district court never explained on 35 the record the basis for its initial “complex case” designation, so the Bikundi rule cannot rehabilitate the district court’s inadequate complexity designations later on. Further still, even when a case is undisputedly complex, complexity per se is not an excuse for “indefinite delay,” Beech-Nut Nutrition Corp., 871 F.2d at 1198, or “a means of circumventing the requirements of the Speedy Trial Act,” United States v. LoFranco, 818 F.2d 276, 277 (2d Cir. 1987). Rather, the “length of an exclusion for complexity must be not only limited in time, but also reasonably related to the actual needs of the case.” Gambino, 59 F.3d at 358. When the district court excluded time, it never made any record about why the case’s purported complexity justified that particular adjournment or the overall delay in this case, findings that are necessary to support an adjournment for complexity. Under the circumstances, a wait of three-and-a-half years for trial was not appropriate. With this framework in mind, we have no trouble concluding that the district court clearly erred in attributing the multi-year delays to the case being “complex,” to “negotiations,” and to “motions” when the Government’s discovery conduct was the true cause of the delay. Our analysis focuses in particular on two 36 periods of delay, each of which prompted Speedy Trial Act motions by the defense, which were denied in conclusory fashion by the district court. 12 OMIG Subpoena First, we consider the period from May 3, 2017 to November 14, 2017, when Pikus was trying to obtain audit documents from OMIG and MFCU via subpoenas. During this period, the district court granted adjournments four times, never once expressly acknowledging that the case was on hold for this document production. At the status conference held May 3, 2017, the Government represented to the Court that it had “finished collecting” the audit materials and that HHS had produced all responsive audit documents—representations upon which the Court relied but that ultimately turned out to be inaccurate. App’x at 158. But prosecutors also stated that OMIG and MFCU were refusing to produce documents in response to the Government’s requests and that Pikus would need 12Each of the two periods of delay discussed below resulted in more than 70 nonexcluded days, and so each period independently exceeded the permissible delay under 18 U.S.C. § 3161(c)(1). However, we note that the Government conceded that the district court also neglected to exclude altogether 12 days in September and November 2016 resulting from rescheduled hearings and an additional 32 days between our September 25, 2019 order granting Pikus’s petition for a writ of mandamus vacating the district court’s bail revocation, In re: Aleksandr Pikus, No. 19-2891, Doc. 40 (2d Cir. Sept. 25, 2019), and the start of trial on October 28, 2019. Therefore, only 26 days of non-excludable delay from either of the two periods analyzed below would be required to result in a Speedy Trial Act violation. 37 to subpoena the agencies to obtain their audit documents and investigative files. Pikus formally moved for the subpoenas’ issuance through a follow-up letter dated May 23, 2017, and the subpoenas were issued following the June 6, 2017 conference. 13 At both the May and June conferences, the Court stated simply, without any motion or on-the-record explanation, that “[t]ime is excluded.” App’x at 166, 179. Even if we infer that it was obvious from the context that the adjournments were required for the state agencies to produce documents—a benefit of the doubt that would strain our precedent, see Lynch, 726 F.3d at 354 n.5 (district courts should make a contemporaneous record of findings supporting ends-of-justice exclusions)—the exclusions of time would still be improper. The Court nowhere indicated that it had weighed whether the ends of justice were served by delaying trial for months so that a state agency that had participated in the joint investigation of the defendant could begin the process of collecting and producing documents more than four months after the Government had committed to their production and requested the same materials. 13The 14-day period from May 23, 2017 to June 6, 2017 is automatically excludable under 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(1)(D) because Pikus’s motion for issuance of the subpoenas was pending. See Shellef, 718 F.3d at 111–12. 38 By the September 12, 2017 conference—131 days after the May 3, 2017 status conference—the two state agencies had still not complied with the subpoenas, but they had told defense counsel to expect documents on September 26, 2017. As the conference wrapped up, the Court stated “Time is excluded,” and remarked, “Your motions are still pending and negotiations.” App’x at 207. This statement was clearly erroneous. There were no open motions at that time. And while the Government noted it was “in the process of making the final [plea] offers in this case,” the record reflects that the Court was waiting for the discovery, not the negotiations, to take the next step and set pre-trial motion schedules. Id. at 206–07. By the October 12, 2017 conference, Pikus’s counsel reported that neither state agency had yet complied with the subpoenas, and he requested leave to make a motion to compel, even as the Government represented that it had fully complied with its Rule 16 obligations. The Court nonetheless set a schedule for the defense to make omnibus pre-trial motions and excluded time over the defense’s objection, saying “The motions are pending. You’re in negotiations.” App’x at 222. Again, the record indicates that no motions were pending, the motion schedule was dictated by the discovery situation, and the Court had rejected the 39 Government’s request to wait “30 or 45 days” to set a trial date “as plea negotiations continue.” 14 App’x at 211, 215. We therefore conclude that there were 181 non-excludable days between May 3, 2017, when the case was delayed due to the Government’s failure to obtain audit documents from OMIG and MFCU, and November 14, 2017, when Pikus filed his motion to dismiss, see 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(1)(D); Shellef, 718 F.3d at 111–12 (filing of pre-trial motion triggers automatic exclusion of time). Because this is more than twice the Speedy Trial Act’s permissible limit of 70 non-excluded days before trial, the district court should have granted Pikus’s motion to dismiss, and its February 12, 2018 memorandum order must be reversed. This alone would suffice to vacate Pikus’s sentence. HHS Subpoena There was at least one other period of delay resulting from the Government’s conduct in discovery that also should have led to dismissal of the indictment: the period from August 7, 2018 (when we denied Pikus’s pending 14 According to Appellant’s brief, there were no ongoing plea negotiations with Pikus at the time. But even if we were to accept the Court’s finding that the delay during this period was attributable to plea negotiations with Pikus, and not only with his coconspirators, it would not change the outcome, since the Court first offered that rationale on September 12, 2017, after 131 non-excludable days had then elapsed since May 3, 2017. 40 mandamus petition) through October 22, 2018 (when Pikus’s co-defendant filed a motion). The Court had previously set a trial date of May 15, 2018, which was nearly two years after Pikus was arrested, and more than one year after the prosecutors represented to the court that HHS had produced all responsive documents. But on April 18, 2018, less than one month before the scheduled trial, the Government disclosed that a subpoena from one of the Bakry defendants had spurred HHS to identify more audit documents that were relevant to Pikus, and they would be produced to Pikus “close in time to, during, or even after the trial.” App’x at 386. When the Court finally convened a conference one week before the trial, Pikus had moved for issuance of a trial subpoena. The Government opposed this request at the hearing, arguing that the subpoena was broader than the original discovery agreement, even though its letter brief in opposition to the motion correctly stated that “the proposed Subpoena seeks largely the same documents as the Agreed Requests” from December 2016. App’x at 448; compare App’x 396–97 with 123–27. Eventually, the Government conceded that the trial would have to be adjourned, and the Court set a new trial date of October 1, 2018. At the May 10, 2018 conference, the Court excluded time through October 1, 2018 on the Government’s motion, with the prosecutor repeating that the “case 41 was designated as complex” and “what you see here[] is an example of exactly that type of complexity. There’s voluminous discovery.” App’x at 478. Pikus objected. Though the Court prevented counsel from making a full record, counsel stated that “[t]his is not a proper designation of a case that’s complex,” and argued that the discovery delays were “the fault of the government.” App’x at 479. We agree. Leaving aside the state agencies’ documents, which are addressed above, the Government repeatedly and inaccurately represented to the Court that it had completed discovery and that HHS had produced all audit documents called for by the December 2016 discovery agreement. Yet, two years after Pikus’s arrest, the May 15, 2018 trial date was adjourned due to HHS’s delayed and haphazard production. Had the Government directed HHS to undertake fuller collection and production of its audit documents as agreed, there would have been no need for the agency to scramble to produce documents two years after Pikus’s arrest, and no need to adjourn the May 15, 2018 trial date. 15 15 We do not address whether the disputed audit documents constituted Brady material, or whether Pikus was entitled to them over the Government’s objection. The delays described above arose from the Government’s failure to produce documents it agreed to produce, or represented that it had already produced when, in fact, it had not. 42 Moreover, even if one were to suppose that the case was complex due to the ongoing and convoluted discovery proceedings, the Court’s mere “passing reference to the case’s complexity,” Zedner, 547 U.S. at 507, and its failure to articulate why the further delay was “reasonably related to the actual needs of the case,” Gambino, 59 F.3d at 358, render the record inadequate to support the exclusion of time. The district court thus failed to provide a sufficient basis for excluding time to October 1, 2018, and the non-excludable days began accruing as soon as we denied Pikus’s pending petition for a writ of mandamus on August 7, 2018. 16 The court continued to exclude time erroneously based on the unexplained “complexity” of the case after the May 10, 2018 conference. After the summer passed without a production from HHS, the Court held a status conference on September 6, 2018, at which an HHS representative estimated it would take four to six more weeks to produce documents. The Court rejected this timeline as too 16 On April 17, 2018, Pikus filed in this court a petition for a writ of mandamus to require the district court to dismiss the indictment on speedy trial grounds. We denied that petition on August 7, 2018. In re: Aleksandr Pikus, No. 18-1109, Doc. 29 (2d Cir. Aug. 7, 2018). We assume without deciding that this period was automatically excludable as an “interlocutory appeal,” 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(1)(C), though we note that the district court here did not “delay[] the trial to await the outcome of the mandamus action.” See United States v. Tyler, 878 F.2d 753, 759–60 (3d Cir. 1989) (excluding time during pending petition for writ of mandamus where the district court awaited decision on the petition). 43 slow but denied Pikus’s application for a hearing on the cause of HHS’s delay and took no other concrete action to speed discovery. The Court ultimately adjourned the trial to January 28, 2019. Again, the Government cited the “request for documents” as “one of those features of the complexity” of the case and moved for exclusion of time through the new trial date. App’x at 529–30. When Pikus’s counsel asked whether “the adjournment [was] being made because they have failed to produce the documents,” the Court ignored him, saying “Time is excluded. It is a complex case.” App’x at 530. Again, the Court perfunctorily stated the case was complex, and failed to fully articulate its interests-of-justice determination. Zedner, 547 U.S. at 506; Gambino, 59 F.3d at 358. Therefore, the 46 days from September 6 through October 22, 2018, when Pikus’s co-defendant filed a motion related to material in an HHS production, were not properly excluded. 17 17It is true “that in cases involving multiple defendants [whose trials have not been severed] only one speedy trial clock, beginning on the date of the commencement of the speedy trial clock of the most recently added defendant, need be calculated” and “[i]n this computation, a delay attributable to any one defendant is chargeable only to the single controlling clock.” United States v. Piteo, 726 F.2d 50, 52 (2d Cir. 1983). However, to appropriately exclude time for plea negotiations in a multi-defendant case, the district court should make clear on the record which defendants are engaged in negotiations and determine whether severance would be possible or appropriate. We also reject the Government’s suggestion at oral argument that long periods of time may be summarily 44 In sum, the record provides no indication that the district court adequately considered whether the ends of justice were served by adjourning Pikus’s trial for the 76 days between August 7, 2018 and October 22, 2018. Since this period is again more than the 70 non-excludable days permitted by the Speedy Trial Act, it independently justified dismissal of the indictment when Pikus orally renewed his motion to dismiss just before jury selection commenced. We therefore reverse the district court’s denial of Pikus’s second motion to dismiss under the Speedy Trial Act.