Court Opinion

ID: 9469853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:50:39.851202+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:35.949100
License: Public Domain

MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Much of the majority opinion has my wholehearted agreement. I, too, am of the opinion, for the reasons Judge Winter has stated, so well, that the issue of the enforceability of the seventy day time limit by dismissal of the indictment for failure to meet it remained alive and in need of resolution, despite the Government’s reversal of position. Indeed, with none of the majority opinion do I necessarily take substantive issue. My difference springs simply from the conviction that, on so sensitive a subject as the demarcation between the power of the legislature on the one hand, and of the judiciary, on the other, no more should be said than is absolutely necessary for disposition. See Liverpool Steamship Co. v. Emigration Commissioners, 113 U.S. 33, 39, 5 S.Ct. 352, 355, 28 L.Ed. 899 (1885). A cardinal rule of our jurisprudence cautions that constitutional adjudication should be avoided. United States v. Clark, 445 U.S. 23, 27, 100 S.Ct. 895, 899, 63 L.Ed.2d 171 (1980); Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 62, 52 S.Ct. 285, 296, 76 L.Ed. 598 (1932). Declaring a statute constitutional is significant involvement in the political arena, different only in degree, from a declaration of unconstitutionality.
The potential for different and greater battles on the major constitutional front to which the case sub judice would take us, if a constitutional decision is to be made, is always present and today’s dicta may prove mischievous for tomorrow’s cases in unfore*700seen and unforeseeable ways. Indeed, United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128, 20 L.Ed. 519 (1871), is an excellent example, albeit at the opposite extreme, of the wisdom of avoiding obiter statements on a particularly complex and sensitive issue. The majority panel opinion effectively states the compelling case for suppressing “sweeping dicta” which could, and have indeed proved “troublesome.” Cf. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 245-246, 65 S.Ct. 193, 207, 89 L.Ed. 194 (1944), reh’g denied, 324 U.S. 885, 65 S.Ct. 674, 89 L.Ed. 1435 (1945) (Jackson, J., dissenting) (“The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.”).
Accordingly, while I start on the same journey in company with my colleagues and travel much of the road with them, arriving in the end at the same destination on the merits, I choose a direct and simpler route which avoids deciding knotty constitutional questions.
Judge Young, on constitutional grounds, sought to avoid constraints on his, or more appropriately the judiciary’s, control of the length of time following indictment and arraignment in which a criminal defendant must be tried. He denied a congressional power to impose such constraints.
However, over and beyond the considerations alluded to in the majority’s opinion, there was another factor present which not only merits mention, but is indeed decisive of the case now before us. The United States District Court for the District of Maryland, operating under its power to adopt local rules of procedure, had, on May 26, 1976 almost unanimously1 adopted a time limit of seventy days for bringing a criminal case to trial. See Local Rule 30(4)(a) of the United States District Court, District of Maryland. I am prepared to assume that the seventy-day limit represents the considered judgment of the then seven active judges of the District Court of Maryland as to the time requirements that would best satisfy the conditions of the docket and conveniences of the court. The trial date fixed by Judge Young was outside the time limit imposed by the local court rules as well as outside the time limit set by Congress. By reference to the pertinent section (18 U.S.C. § 3162) of the Speedy Trial Act, the local rule also mandates dismissal for failure to comply with the seventy day time limit.
There are two ways of looking at the local rule. One would comport with Judge Young’s view of matters by implying, although the rule does not so state, that it is subject to a condition reading: “If and to the extent, if any, that Congress had the constitutional power to force judges to abide by the Speedy Trial Act and adopt regulations under it .... ” The other more reasonable view is that the decision to adopt a seventy-day limit, made by the judges of the district, including Judge Young, simply evinces a concordance with congressional opinion, in that the local rule is responsive to the administrative necessities of the district court as well as to the mandate of the Sixth Amendment. The latter reading of the rule is supported by the fact that in 1973, all the then active judges of the district, had enacted a rule which likewise set a ninety-day limit on the time in which a criminal trial had to be commenced. The District of Maryland’s local rule was enacted prior to the passage of the Speedy Trial Act. See Local Rule 30(2)(b) of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, No. 642 Miscellaneous Docket, Entry No. 50 (June 20, 1973). Clearly, it has been the wisdom of the District of Maryland to make use of such time limits for nearly a decade. That the sanction of dismissal first saw the light of day in the Speedy Trial Act does not militate against a conclusion that the district court, with the objective of national uniformity, or for other meritorious reasons, accepted it as satisfactory, or at any rate tolerable, from the court’s point of view.
Even, indeed especially, if Judge Young is right that the Speedy Trial Act time limit *701amounts to an unconstitutional infringement by Congress of the doctrine of separation of powers, then the courts themselves must necessarily have the power to set time limits for bringing criminal cases to trial. I would read the action of the District of Maryland in adopting the local rule as a determination by the judges involved that a time limit should exist and that the court should adopt ways and means to apply it in an evenhanded and uniform way. Nothing would preclude the judges in their rules from validly adopting and incorporating by reference the language of the Speedy Trial Act, even assuming that the Act is itself unconstitutional. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 57 (empowering the district courts to promulgate rules). Cf. United States v. Inman, 483 F.2d 738 (4th Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 416 U.S. 988, 94 S.Ct. 2394, 40 L.Ed.2d 766 (1974) (district court has the right to control its docket). If the Act’s unconstitutionality stems merely from the fact that Congress was the wrong, and the court the right, party to adopt the substantive provisions of the Act, such subsequent judicial adoption and incorporation by reference would cure the defect.
Inasmuch as the local rules of the United States District Court, and particularly local rule 30(4)(a) setting the seventy-day limit have an independent and constitutional life of their own, I would rely on them for the decision that Judge Young was wrong in refusing to dismiss the case. See United States v. Hvass, 355 U.S. 570, 575, 78 S.Ct. 501, 504, 2 L.Ed.2d 496 (1958) (local rules have force of law). Accord United States v. Warren, 601 F.2d 471 (9th Cir. 1979).
We should leave for another day the tangled questions addressed by Judge Winter. For example, had the local rule remained ninety days instead of dropping to a seventy-day limit, when amended by the district court, there would then be a present conflict between the provisions made by Congress and those made by the court. Only in such circumstances would it be necessary to face up to a perplexing question which I regret to see dealt with in a vacuum.
If the view I have adopted were to prevail; Judge Young would not continue to invalidate the seventy day limit in other cases. Even if our opinion were to rest simply on the local rule and not on the uneonstitutionality of the Speedy Trial Act, there would be an appellate holding and I do not assume that Judge Young would ignore it. The risk of inconsistency, as among judges of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, referred to (slip op. at 6) by the majority panel members, therefore, would not exist.
I most respectfully ask my colleagues: “Who are the disputants here?”. It takes two to make a law suit as surely as it does to tango. If the judiciary, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland in particular, wants to take issue, and present a case or controversy, as to the constitutionality of the Speedy Trial Act, all it need do is prescribe a different time period in Local Rule 30 and wait for a case within it, but outside the seventy day limit contained in the Speedy Trial Act. Or it can adopt supplemental language reinstating the provision that: “Failure to conform with the time limits herein prescribed shall not require dismissal of the prosecution.” Absent such circumstances, we should wait, as we uniformly do in other situations, and refrain from issuing an advisory opinion.2
The fact is that, if the constitutionality of the Speedy Trial Act should be addressed, it should be only if and when the prospect of disagreement between legislature and judiciary patently exists. As long as Local Rule 30 continues in its present form, no such possibility of confrontation exists as to the point we are asked to consider. Hence, I respectfully adhere to the position that we should not address it.
*702Judge Winter, in addressing the constitutional issue, has done so adroitly, which is hardly surprising for he is an outstanding craftsman. But even for the master worker in silver, silence may be golden.
Accordingly and respectfully, I concur.

. One member did not vote and presumably was not present.

. I have not retreated from my earlier stated view that the case, in its entirety, is not moot. It must be decided, but the route to decision that the majority has chosen encounters mootness. If, as it appears, there is an alternative basis of decision, resolution of the constitutional question is unnecessary. However, the basic question of the validity of the seventy day time limit remains, and must be decided.