Opinion ID: 2790079
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Time Between the Second Verdict and the

Text: Second New Trial Order As the district court itself recognized, see Carpenter, 2014 WL 691659 at , Carpenter's argument acquires some traction when we turn to the roughly thirty-eight months that passed between the end of the second trial in June 2008 and the district court's granting Carpenter's motion for a second new trial in September -23- 2011.11 A portion of that time passed in what can fairly be described as normal course. The parties agreed to a schedule for post-trial briefs, a hearing was set for October and then postponed to December 3, 2008, based on requests by both parties and without objection. Had nothing else been at issue, nor anything else filed, one would normally have expected a decision on the admittedly extensive and heavily briefed motions for acquittal or new trial by the June 2009 anniversary of the trial. Instead, no ruling issued until September 2011. The district court admitted that it bore at least some responsibility for this regrettable delay, but also cited Carpenter's many motions as the main culprit. Id. at -3. It is well-established that it cuts heavily against a defendant's speedy trial claims when his own motions contribute to the delay. Loud Hawk, 474 U.S. at 316-17 (Having sought the aid of the judicial process and realizing the deliberateness that a court employs in reaching a decision, the defendants are not now able to criticize the very process which they so frequently called upon.) (internal quotation marks omitted); United States v. Worthy, 772 F.3d 42, 49 (1st Cir. 2014); United States v. Muñoz-Franco, 487 F.3d 25, 60-61 (1st Cir. 2007); Nelson-Rodríguez, 319 F.3d at 61; United States v. 11 Carpenter made the new trial motion in July 2008, thirtyeight months before September 2011. However, he asks the court to focus on only the thirty-four months between the hearing on the new trial motion on December 3, 2008, and the granting of that motion on September 1, 2011. -24- Muñoz-Amado, 182 F.3d 57, 62 (1st Cir. 1999); United States v. Gibson, 353 F.3d 21, 22-23 (D.C. Cir. 2003). In this case, in addition to the numerous motions that were pending at the end of the second trial, Carpenter made twenty filings between the June 2008 jury verdict and the December 2008 hearing on his motions. As described in the facts section of this opinion, these filings included two separate sets of motions for acquittal or new trial filed by two separate legal teams and which advanced numerous, distinct theories of error; two additional motions for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence; and lengthy responses to the government's responses. Many were very substantial.12 Presumably he wanted the district court to review them all, and of course the court had to review the government's responses. Carpenter defends his avalanche of filings as justified. But that is beside the point. The filings cut against Carpenter in our Sixth Amendment analysis not because they were weak or otherwise not justified. Rather, they cut in this manner because they support the district court's statement that the need to consider the filings reasonably consumed time. 12 Some of the more lengthy filings include the initial sixtyseven-page motion for acquittal or new trial; a response to the government's opposition to that motion, totaling forty-eight pages with exhibits; and a reply memorandum in support of his mistrial motion totaling seventy-six pages with exhibits. -25- Carpenter then points out that the district court did not rely on the post-hearing filings regarding Merrill Lynch when it finally granted Carpenter a new trial in September 2011. That is, if the district court granted Carpenter's 2008 motion without regard to any of the arguments raised in subsequent motions, why did it not do so closer to 2008?13 The problem with this argument is that it suggests the district court would have known at the outset the grounds on which its decision would rest. This expects too much of the district court. Carpenter's Merrill Lynch motions began in March 2009, three months after the motion hearing. As he continued updating the court, he explicitly stated that this new information had a direct bearing on his pending motions. ECF No. 349 at 1, June 10, 2009. His regular updates suggested a fastchanging situation that could likely lead to more motions. At least initially, the district court cannot be faulted for holding off on making a ruling while the information was still evolving and Carpenter was insisting it was relevant. 13 Carpenter also argues in his reply brief that the district court could not have considered the new evidence in preparation for the September 2011 order because the district court stated in the December 2008 hearing that the government's behavior with regard to this evidence did not violate its obligations under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). However, Carpenter at no time suggested that he was presenting the Merrill Lynch evidence solely as a Brady claim, and in fact explicitly stated multiple times in his 2009 submissions that this information was relevant to his pending motions for retrial and acquittal. -26- This argument loses some force over time, however, particularly after the civil trial against Merrill Lynch concluded in July 2009. Although Carpenter continued to provide updates based on newly decided cases and the damages phase of the civil trial, after October 2009 they became less frequent, and Carpenter began pressing the district court to rule on his motions. See ECF No. 355 at 1, October 28, 2009. Granted, the unusually large number of motions, as well as their length, makes it unsurprising that the district court would still need an unusually long time to give them full consideration. By the time of Carpenter's October 2009 motion, however, sixteen months had passed since the end of trial, and Carpenter had formally moved the district court to make a decision on the motions that had been argued in December 2008. Once the anniversary of that hearing had passed, the reason for any continuing delay can no longer be attributed primarily to Carpenter. We therefore conclude that there was an unwarranted delay of some twenty-one months in the progress of this case, from roughly December 2009 to September 1, 2011.14 Nevertheless, the prosecution played no role in this unwarranted delay. Nor was the district court using delay in any hostile manner. When delay is the result of negligence and not bad faith, it weighs less heavily 14 Putting a finer point on this estimate would require comparative empirical evidence not readily available and would, in any event, be irrelevant to our conclusions. -27- in the balancing called for by Barker. Barker, 407 U.S. at 531 (A deliberate attempt to delay the trial in order to hamper the defense should be weighted heavily against the government. A more neutral reason such as negligence or overcrowded courts should be weighted less heavily but nevertheless should be considered . . . .); see Santiago-Becerril, 130 F.3d at 22.