Court Opinion

ID: 9791123
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:06:08.511595+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:34.272064
License: Public Domain

SLOAN, J.,
dissenting.
It is instantly obvious to anyone studying this case that neither our courts nor other officials of this state can compel the custodians of federal prisoners to produce them in our courts. But it is equally clear that the federal custodians, upon proper request, will deliver one of their prisoners to an Oregon court. Therefore, this court can and should say that when a federally confined prisoner seeks immediate trial it is incumbent on the prosecutor to activate that request. The majority opinion does no more than tell the district attorney that this is advisable. But the result of the instant case is not the important fault of the majority opinion. The real fault is the failure to recognize the stronger and more demanding policies that have evolved from the need for a speedy trial.
The policy of this state in respect to the immediate trial of a person confined within the state is expressed in OBS 134.510(1) et seq. These statutes permit the inmate charged with another offense to send a notice to the proper district attorney requesting trial. OBS 134.520(1) requires that the one charged be brought to trial within 90 days. Further delay can be had only by his consent or by order of the court upon good cause shown by the district attorney. OBS 134.530 requires tiie court to dismiss the case if it is not brought to trial as provided by OBS 134.520.
The need for and the design of a method to obtain prompt trial that is expressed in our statute has-been *327recognized and implemented by the Council on State Governments. The Council has proposed an agreement between the states on detainers by which a prisoner of one state may clear detainers filed against him by jurisdictions outside the state in which he is imprisoned. This agreement provides that a prisoner must be brought to trial by the charging state within 180 days after the prisoner’s request to be returned to the detaining state for trial, or the charge must be dismissed. Fifteen states had adopted this agreement by the end of 1965. Handbook on Interstate Crime Control, page 91, published by the Council of State Governments, rev ed 1966.
The need and virtue of that idea has also been recommended by the American Bar Association Report on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice. See Tentative Draft of Standards Relating to Speedy Trial. Although the Task Force Report on the Courts by the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice is primarily concerned with other policy questions relating to delay, its findings and recommendations are pertinent to the problem presented by this case.
The policy found in our statutes and in the cited recommendations is of more far reaching consequence than that suggested by the majority, and the policy is not wholly altruistic. Trial without delay can promote pleas of guilty, early fact finding and determination of the charge, plea bargaining① and other action eliminating court congestion. And, it is not only defense witnesses who expire or disappear. In short, the policy to be implemented, when possible, is that definite rules *328relating to speedy trials provide better administration of justice by tbe courts than attempting to solve, after trial, the unworkable equation of what is oppressive delay.
The vice of the majority opinion is that it does not adhere to that policy. Whether or not there was just cause to delay defendant’s trial should have been decided by the court when he first petitioned to be brought to Oregon for trial, not after the event as the majority now permit. The positive rule, the rule that would provide certainty in the future would be to hold that it was error for the district attorney and the court to disregard defendant’s petition. We should hold that a hearing should have been provided at that time to decide whether or not it was feasible, reasonable and necessary to allow the petition. Failure to have done so should be cause for discharge.

 The Task Force Report recommends reconsideration of the idea of a negotiated plea of guilty, p 9 et seq.