Opinion ID: 198181
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Pringle Exception

Text: 53 In an effort to defeat the operation of the Act, the government argues that the entire period of time from October 7, 1996 onward must be excluded because Barnes waived her right to a speedy trial. The government maintains that Barnes's June 6, 1996 waiver impermissibly lulled it and the district court to sleep. We reject the government's theory of an unlimited waiver. 54 Defendants generally may not elect to waive the protections of the Act. The reason is that the public has at least as great an interest as the defendant in an expeditious criminal trial. See United States v. Hastings, 847 F.2d 920, 923 (1st Cir.) (noting that society has a general interest in resolving the guilt or innocence of those accused of crime rapidly (consistent with fundamental fairness) and punishing those found to be guilty), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 925, 109 S.Ct. 308, 102 L.Ed.2d 327 (1988). 55 In United States v. Pringle, 751 F.2d 419 (1st Cir.1984), we crafted a limited unclean hands exception to this rule. Cf. United States v. Gambino, 59 F.3d 353, 360 (2d Cir.1995) ([T]hose courts recognizing the [Pringle ] exception have placed tight restrictions on the finding of waiver.), cert. denied, 517 U.S. 1187, 116 S.Ct. 1671, 134 L.Ed.2d 776 (1996). In Pringle, defendants had sought to continue the trial, declaring that all defendants waive[d] their rights to a speedy trial. 751 F.2d at 433. Defendants later moved to dismiss the indictment based on the delay that ensued in selecting a new trial date. The district court denied the motion. We affirmed, holding, inter alia, that although a defendant cannot waive the right to speedy trial, he or she cannot lull[ ] the court and prosecution into a false sense of security only to turn around later and use the waiver-induced leisurely pace of the case as grounds for dismissal. Id. at 434. 56 The government here asserts that defendants' June 6, 1996 waiver was indefinite in scope, tolling the clock up to and including the first date of trial in May 1997. 6 Relying on Pringle, the government argues that the waiver provided by defendants caused the delay by misleading the government and the court into believing that any date would be acceptable to them. While any waiver would technically be inoperative, if the government is correct about the nature of the waiver, the delay that resulted from the waiver would be excludable under Pringle. 57 We are not persuaded that the Pringle exception applies to the extent suggested by the government. While defendants' waiver definitely contributed to a delay until October 7, Barnes cannot be held responsible for the delay that occurred after trial was initially set for that date and then subsequently continued. We reach this conclusion for several reasons. 58 First, defendants did not offer an open-ended waiver. Unlike the sweeping language contained in defendants' waiver in Pringle, the waiver at issue does not represent defendants' consent to an indefinite exclusion of time, but authorized time to be excluded only until the date set for the new trial in the fall of 1996. By its terms, the document did not waive Barnes's speedy trial rights indefinitely. 59 Second, even if there was any ambiguity as to the scope of the waiver, the extraneous evidence conclusively puts that doubt to rest in Barnes's favor. The waiver closely followed and was inextricably bound up with Barnes's request for an adjournment until late September or early October. Thus, read together with her motion to continue, the waiver put the district court and the government on notice that Barnes desired a trial by October 1996. 60 Third, no one was lull[ed] to sleep by the waiver. The joint motion for a status conference later drafted by the government proves this. In the motion, the parties purportedly sought an exclusion of time from the date of an entry of an Order on defendant's pre-trial motions until such date as this Court sets for trial. (A.37). But if the government had truly believed that Barnes had already provided an open-ended waiver on June 6, 1996, such a broad and seemingly retroactive exclusion of time would have been unnecessary. The government's own actions therefore suggest that the government itself believed that there might still be a speedy trial problem even after defendants signed the waiver. 61 In addition, the trial court acted on defendants' motions (including the waiver) by continuing the trial only until October 7, 1996, showing that it, too, understood that Barnes wished to be tried by October 1996. The date set by the court stood at the very end of the spectrum of Barnes's waiver. At best, Barnes may be said to have consented to and caused the delay throughout the fall of 1996, tolling the clock under Pringle until early October, but certainly no later. In other words, the limited waiver did not create the delay[ ] that transpired when the date was adjourned from October 7. Id. at 434. 62 Nothing in the record even remotely suggests that Barnes strategically attempted to sandbag anyone. Instead, the record shows that she made clear to the court and prosecution that she desired to be tried in the fall of 1996, at the latest by early October. That did not happen. The reasons for this delay have not been made clear by the guardians of the speedy trial clock: the court, and to a lesser extent, the government. Whether the continuance was justified and the court neglected to make the necessary ends of justice findings or the government simply lost track of the days makes no difference. The unexplained delay occurred; it must be accounted for. 63 If Barnes is guilty of anything during this crucial time frame, it is that she did not object earlier. But her mere failure to object to a delay does not constitute work[ing] both sides of the street, Pringle, 751 F.2d at 434, and it does not excuse the trial court's failure to make explicit findings as to why a continuance best served the interests of justice. To hold otherwise would be to permit the finding of a waiver whenever a defendant fails to object to a continuance. Such a conclusion would turn the Act on its head by shifting the burden of enforcing the Act to the defendant.