Opinion ID: 2314684
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Anxiety

Text: Greene and Parks allege that they suffered anxiety from the delay in bringing them to trial. (Grinnage does not join in this claim.) Where, as here, the charge carries a life sentence and the defendant is incarcerated, a claim of anxiety is plausible. Compare United States v. Bolden, supra at 629 (anxiety was minimal where charge was misdemeanor, more serious charges were outstanding for part of period, and defendant was not imprisoned). Although an assertion of the right to a speedy trial is relevant to the question whether a defendant is anxious about delay, see Bethea, supra at 793, a mere assertion that one had been upset or concerned about a pending criminal prosecution is not sufficient to establish prejudicial anxiety. Reed v. United States, D.C.App., 383 A.2d 316, 320, cert. denied, 439 U.S. 871, 99 S.Ct. 203, 58 L.Ed.2d 183 (1978). Therefore, even when the government has the burden to rebut a defendant's assertion of anxiety, see Bethea, supra at 793, the government will prevail unless the defendant proffers objective, contemporaneous evidence of anxiety, such as prompt and persistent assertion of the desire for a speedy trial coupled with a demonstrable basis for the court's believing the delay is traumatic. See id. (defendant having no prior experience with criminal justice system persistently sought speedy trial on petty theft charge); see generally United States v. Ellis, D.C.App., 408 A.2d 971, 975 (1979) (Ferren, J., dissenting). Greene and Parks twice asserted their speedy trial rights  and with reasonable promptness. See Part III.C. supra. But Parks proffered no other demonstration of anxiety. As veteran defendants in the criminal justice system, neither Parks nor Greene claimed  or could have claimed  anxiety based on the unknown. Compare Bethea, supra at 793, Greene, however, did attach to his speedy trial motion some contemporaneous evidence of anxiety: letters he had written to his trial attorneys urging them to move swiftly because his wife was pregnant and they both were anxious about the impending birth. (Tragically, the baby died soon after birth in December 1978, six months after Greene's arrest.) We therefore agree with the trial court's finding that Parks offered no more than a mere assertion of anxiety, Reed, supra at 320, and we conclude, accordingly, that the government has rebutted that claim. The trial court also found that Greene offered only a mere assertion, within the meaning of Reed. To the contrary, Greene's letters to his attorney reflecting concern about a speedy trial were objective, contemporaneous evidence of anxiety. But Greene's letters (of record) ended after January 1979, and thus their relevance substantially abated beyond the first seven months after arrest, a period during which no one reasonably could have expected this complex case to come to trial  and thus not a period of delay. See Day, supra at 966. We therefore must conclude that Greene's anxiety claim also fails.