Opinion ID: 2790079
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Length of the Challenged Delay9

Text: The first factor, length of delay, is both a triggering mechanism for the rest of the analysis, and a factor in that analysis. United States v. Souza, 749 F.3d 74, 81 (1st Cir. 2014). While Carpenter's brief often cites the ten years that passed from indictment to sentencing, he does not claim that the pace of the proceedings was undue at all times. For example, he has no bone to pick with the speed with which the case moved forward from the indictment in September 2004 to the end of his first trial in July 2005. Nor does he suggest any delay in the district court taking five months to hear and decide the motions Carpenter filed in the wake of that first trial. Certainly the proceedings moved apace up to December 2005, when the district court entered orders denying Carpenter's motion for acquittal and granting him a new trial. Carpenter's complaint about the pace of proceedings finds its first toehold with the government's decision in January 2006 to appeal the district court's granting of a new trial. That appeal sidetracked the case for just over twenty months until the mandate denying the appeal issued in September 2007. Second, Carpenter complains about the pace of proceedings between the end of the 9 We use the unqualified word delay in this opinion to refer to the entire period of time between two events, recognizing that only unjustified delay that fails the Barker balancing test violates the Sixth Amendment. See Barker, 407 U.S. at 533 (analyzing whether the length of delay between arrest and trial violates the Sixth Amendment). -16- second trial in June 2008 and the entry, in September 2011, of the district court's order setting aside the second jury's verdict and ordering a third trial. Finally, Carpenter complains about the twenty-six months consumed by the government's successful appeal of the order setting aside the second jury verdict. The government concedes the foregoing calculations of delay. It argues, however, that the latter two time periods should play no role in our Sixth Amendment analysis because they postdated the June 2008 guilty verdict that our court ultimately sustained. Describing this passage of time as, at worst, a delay in sentencing, the government urges this court to follow the Second Circuit in United States v. Ray, 578 F.3d 184, 198-99 (2d Cir. 2009). In that case, the court opined that the harms arising from delayed sentencing . . . are quite different from those animating the Speedy Trial Clause. Id. at 198. The court concluded that the Constitution protects defendants from sentencing delay through the Fifth Amendment, not the Sixth. Id. at 199. We decline to adopt that conclusion. Although neither the Supreme Court nor this circuit has held that the Sixth Amendment applies to post-conviction delay, both have assumed so arguendo. See Pollard v. United States, 352 U.S. 354, 361 (1957); United States v. Nelson-Rodríguez, 319 F.3d 12, 60 (1st Cir. 2003) (noting that most circuits that had considered the issue had either held or assumed the same). It is no doubt true that the concerns -17- arising from pre-trial delay--when a person presumed to be innocent stands under the shadow of accusation--are not identical to those arising from post-conviction delay. The difference, though, is not quite as great as it may seem, given that a guilty verdict is not yet final until appeals are exhausted. Moreover, our Sixth Amendment analysis itself recognizes the difference in the pre- and post-verdict time frames, in that the required balancing of interests includes an assessment of the extent to which delay causes prejudice. Thus, we see no reason to depart from the majority view that assumes that the Sixth Amendment also protects against post-trial delay. Having thus rejected the government's attempt to excise from our Sixth Amendment analysis the five years that passed between the second jury verdict and the decision of this court sustaining that verdict, we turn our attention to asking, initially, whether any or all of the delays that Carpenter challenges are sufficiently ordinary so as to terminate our Sixth Amendment analysis. Until there is some delay which is presumptively prejudicial, there is no necessity for inquiry into the other factors . . . . Barker, 407 U.S. at 530. In so doing, we accept Carpenter's position that [e]ach of these periods should be assessed separately. At the same time, we also consider any actual delay cumulatively. -18- We need not tarry in making this initial inquiry. Delay of around one year is considered presumptively prejudicial, and the presumption that delay prejudices the defendant intensifies over time. Doggett v. United States, 505 U.S. 647, 652 and n.1 (1992). Given that the periods of time here each well exceed one year, and cumulatively exceed six years, we think it practical to proceed to examining the reasons for that delay.